President Pranab Mukherjee is expected to attend the 64th Annual Convocation of Panjab University (PU), Chandigarh.
This was communicated to PU Vice-Chancellor (VC) Arun Kumar Grover by the private secretary to the President. Grover had earlier requested the President to grace the Annual Convocation of the PU in March 2015.
The final confirmation and exact date and timing will be intimated later, the Rashtrapati Bhawan, communiqué added.
Grover said the consent from the President was a matter of great pride for the University students, faculty and staff members and it would motivate the University to further excel in the field of academics, research, sports and other co-curricular activities.
“President Pranab Mukherjee has earlier called upon the Indian Universities to break into the top 200 varsities of the world. PU is working on the strategy to achieve the goal and this visit would boost our efforts in that direction”, the Vice-Chancellor added.
PU has been ranking as the top Indian University for the last two years in the prestigious Times Higher Education Global Ranking. PU was ranked in the bracket of 226-250 and 276-300 in World Ranking 2013-14 and 2014-15 respectively.
A spokesman of PU said the University has already started its preparations for the visit. PU Syndicate had recently approved for conferring the PU Honorary Degree of Doctor of laws (Honoris Causa) to noted Children Rights Activist and 2014 Noble Peace Prize laureate Kailash Satyarthi and PU Honorary Degrees of Doctor of Science (Honoris Causa) to 2009 Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry, Prof Venkaraman Ramakrishnan and 2014 Field Medal winner and noted mathematician Prof Manjul Bhargava.
The Honrary Degrees are likely to be conferred to the distinguished personalities in the upcoming Convocation.