Rae bareli gets women&’s aviation varsity
archana srivastava
archana23srivastava@yahoo.com 
Lucknow, 11 July
With an eye on the 2014 parliamentary election, the Congress-led UPA government is raining largesse on Mrs Sonia Gandhi&’s constituency of Rae Bareli, where ironically, despite such earlier beneficence and the hectic touring of the Gandhi clan, the national party was able to bag just one of the seven assembly seats in the 2012 Vidhan Sabha polls.
The Union Cabinet today gave its nod to the setting up of the first ever national aviation university and also the country’s first university for women in the UPA chairperson’s political borough. While the aviation university has been christened the Rajiv Gandhi National Aviation University, the women university has been named after former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
The Women varsity will promote the all-round growth and development of women in the country and supplement the government’s efforts towards women empowerment by giving them increased access to employment oriented basic courses and high end research.
The aviation university which will be set up on a 26 acre  plot in Fursatganj has an estimated funding of Rs 202 crore. It will be an autonomous body under the administrative control of the Civil Aviation Ministry, the Bill for which is likely to be brought up in the upcoming monsoon session of the Parliament. To be set up in keeping with the recommendations of the MK Kaw committee in 2006, this Central varsity will promote aviation studies, training and research with a focus on emerging areas like aviation management, aviation regulation and policy, aviation history, law, safety etc.
Congress MLA from the Raudrapur constituency in the Deoria district Mr Akhilesh Pratap Singh said both the universities form part of the Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi’s vision of making Rae Bareli and its adjoining areas a world class educational hub in northern India, which would attract the best talent from the country. He added the opening of a fashion technology  institute, the setting up of an engineering college, a petroleum and automobile institute, and recently the two varsities form part of the educational hub scheme. Both Amethi, represented by Mr Gandhi, and Rae Bareli are close to Lucknow and have a good connectivity with the state capital, he added. The Rajiv Gandhi National Aviation University will not be Rae Bareli’s first brush with the aviation sector. 
In 1985, Rajiv Gandhi had laid the foundation of the Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Udaan Akademi (IGRAU), an aviation school under the Ministry of Civil Aviation. The Akademi set up at Fursatganj, just 18 kms from Rae Bareli, offers both commercial pilot licence and commercial helicopter pilot licence courses.
The opening of two new varsities in Rae Bareli has to be seen in conjunction with election 2014. Mrs Gandhi’s daughter, Mrs Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, has been made in-charge of both the Rae Bareli and the Amethi constituencies to oversee the fortunes of the Congress in what are regarded the bastions of the Gandhi clan.
The two Congress bastions received a severe drubbing in the 2012 Vidhan Sabha polls. Of the seven Assembly segments of Rae Bareli, the Congress was able to retain just one (Tiloi). Five went into the Samajwadi Party’s kitty and one to an independent.