Stalled for three decades, the additional campus proposed by the Delhi University may be ready by 2023, as per the information given by Ramesh Pokhriyal, the Human Resource Development Minister, in Parliament on Tuesday, July 2, 2019.

Replying to a question on the fate of long-standing proposal for a campus in West Delhi, Pokhriyal said the university has informed the ministry it will construct the campus on 16.79 acres in Village Roshanpura of Najafgarh in southwest Delhi.

“The University of Delhi has informed that it has decided to construct a college on a piece of land measuring 83 bighas and 19 biswas (16.70 acres) at Village Roshanpura, Najafgarh. Further, it has initiated the process to appoint CPWD as PMC to construct the college at the proposed land and according to proposal, the duration of construction activity is approximately four years,” read the Minister’s reply.

While the question specifically asked about the campus, the response referred to it as “college”.

The project, if comes about, will bring significant respite to hundreds of students from southwest Delhi, who at present are forced to undertake a long commute to either the north campus, or the south campus, where colleges are scattered over a wide expanse of that part of the city.

The project is far from new. It has been in limbo since 1989, due to a tussle between the Delhi Development Authority and Delhi University, ostensibly, over the construction of a road, which each party insists is the responsibility of the other.

Hearing the dispute in 2018, the Delhi High Court upbraided the two parties for shelving the project for so long and expressed its concern over the rise in the cost of construction since 1989, the year when the land was allocated to the university.

'Since 1989 you have the land. It was given free of cost. Do you know what would be its cost now? Do you know how much the cost of construction would have gone up now? But you are not bothered,” the court was quoted as saying in a PTI report at the time.