Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to address the centenary celebrations of the Viswa-Bharati University at Shantiniketan, Bolpur, on Thursday through video conferencing, the PM’s Office said on Tuesday.

Bengal governor Jagdeep Dhankar and Union education minister Ramesh Pokhriyal will also be present at the event, it said.

The announcement comes days after Union Home Minister Amit Shah visited university as part of his two-day visit to the state.

Following Shah’s visit, Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday announced a “Tagore cultural pride” rally in Bolpur on December 29.

Speaking to the media, the chief minister said she would go to Birbhum for a two-day tour from December 28 and take part in the rally on the second day. “Keshto (Birbhum Trinamul chief Anubrata Mondal) and the others will fix everything,” she said.

“It (the rally) will be on how Rabindranath Tagore, his culture is our pride. This will be a movement of the people of the soil,” she added, apparently following up on Mondal’s allegations that most in the home minister’s road show were bohiragawto (outsiders).

Founded by Rabindranath Tagore in 1921, Visva-Bharati is the oldest central university in the country.

Tagore, a Nobel laureate, is one of the most revered icons from Bengal, a state which will go to the assembly polls in the first half of the next year.

In May 1951, Visva-Bharati was declared to be a Central University and an institution of national importance" by an Act of Parliament, the PMO noted.

The university followed the pedagogy devised by Tagore, though gradually it evolved in the format in which modern universities developed elsewhere.

The prime minister is the chancellor of the university.