The foundation stone for a campus of St Xavier’s College (Autonomous) Kolkata was laid at Ajoynagar off EM Bypass on Thursday.
Once ready in 2025, the campus will house a communications hub and research facility.
The departments of mass communication and videography, film studies, journalism, multimedia and animation and other allied departments from UG to PG will be housed on this campus.
It will have two eight-storeyed buildings with a multimedia lab, shooting floor, preview theatre, open-air auditorium, incubation centre, archive and a community radio station.
The campus is five minutes’ walk from EM Bypass and not far from the Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute. The foundation stone was laid by Father Dominic Savio, principal; Father Jeyaraj Veluswamy, rector; and Father P.C. Mathew, former principal of the college.
“The college is in an expansion mode to create more space with modern facilities to cater to more students from undergraduate to doctoral level. Mass communication and multimedia-related fields have a bright future and great scope as they are in the sunshine segments of the industry and will require more trained personnel in the future. This new facility will create a learning opportunity for more students in the fields concerned,” Father Savio said in his address.
The Ajoynagar campus is going to be the third campus of St Xavier’s College. The second, a rural campus set up in Raghabpur in South 24-Parganas, came up a few years ago.
“Our ambition for this new campus is to set up a communications hub centred on the department of mass communication and videography and the multimedia and animation department. I believe this will be the first-of-its-kind in eastern India,” said Father Savio.
“The St Xavier’s College (Kolkata) Alumni Association has come forward in mobilising resources for setting up the new campus, as it has done earlier, and an international convention of the alumni meet is being organised in London early next month to explore such opportunities,” said the honorary secretary of St Xavier’s College (Kolkata) Alumni Association, Firdausul Hasan.
Four arrested on border for infiltration attempt
Three Bangladeshis and an Indian were intercepted by the BSF at different locations of the India-Bangladesh border in north Bengal on Wednesday for allegedly trying to enter India illegally.
Troops of 137 battalion of the BSF posted at Chakgopal border outpost in South Dinajpurcaught Moloy Kumar Datta, a resident of Dinajpur district of Bangladesh, his wife, daughter and another woman from Malda, while they were trying to enter India illegally. All of them have been handed over to Hilli police.
In another incident, personnel of 61 battalion of the force posted at Hilli 2 border outpost nabbed Anowar Mondal, a resident of Gossaipur under Hilli police station, while he was trying to smuggle cough syrup bottles to Bangladesh.