Calcutta University will shift the workshop of BTech students from its Ballygunge campus to the Salt Lake campus (also known as the tech campus), possibly over the next few months, so that students don’t have to travel to Ballygunge Science College twice a week.

BTech students are taught engineering mechanics and drawing at the workshop in the second semester. Because of the absence of a workshop on the tech campus, students are required to travel to Ballygunge Science College for lessons in engineering mechanics and drawing.

Only the Ballygunge campus has a workshop, which was set up in 2000 for the students of the four-year BTech course in jute and fibre |technology.

A CU official said that though the university had decided to launch four-year BTech programmes in eight other disciplines like computer science and engineering, and information technology in 2015 on the tech campus, the workshop could not be set up until now.

“We will dismantle the workshop on the Ballygunge campus and have it shifted to the Salt Lake campus. We hope that from this academic year, which is likely to start in August, students won’t have to travel to Ballygunge from the Salt Lake campus,” CU registrar Debasish Das told Metro.

An official said the tender for the removal and reinstallation of the gadgets would be floated in May, after the Assembly elections. “The long commute from Salt Lake to Ballygunge, apart from inconveniencing students, was eating into their time for theoretical classes,” he said.

The engineering classes of Calcutta University are held on the Salt Lake, Ballygunge and Rajabazar campuses.

As the duration of the other eight engineering courses of the university was three years before 2015, the students were not required to attend workshop classes.

“Attending workshop classes is mandatory only for students in the four-year BTech course,” said a teacher in the radio physics department.

Sankhayan Chowdhury, a professor in the computer science and engineering department, said they had flagged the absence of the workshop on the tech campus over the past several years.

“The workshop should have been set up in Salt Lake much earlier…. These days if you don’t provide the required infrastructure, a bright student will not enrol,” said Choudhury, the general secretary of the Calcutta University Teachers’ Association.

CU vice-chancellor Sonali Chakravarti Banerjee had told Metro in May 2018 that the university had released funds to build a workshop on the tech campus.