And they have strong reasons for alarm. The budget of Congress is of Rs two crore and there is not a single penny in the university coffers, collected for the event so far. More so, there are just six months remaining for the event and nothing has really moved for the university.

The grandiose of the conference can be estimated by the fact that a total of 6000 people, including 3000 top Indian and foreign scientists, Nobel laureates and remaining students and professors, will camp in the city for five days from January 3 to 7.

So when the organising committee for the Congress moved into its corporate office in Science Technology Park in university campus this week, the mood was full of trepidation. It could not match even a fraction of excitement that gripped the city when the Union Human Resource Development Minister announced its name for the event.

Speaking to The Indian Express Bhushan Patwardhan, organising secretary of the event admitted that the scarcity of funds of dogging the university. ``It is true that we are facing a tough time for generation of funds for the Science Congress,'' he said.

Now, due to Kargil conflict it is likely that the government may not be able to sanction all the money required to organise the conference, he added.

This is also apparent from the near zero response the committee has got so far from the government agencies associated with the organising of event. Despite writing to the agencies such as Department of Science and Technology, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, University Grants Commission, Department of Biotechnology, Department of Atomic Energy, Defence Research Development Organisation and Indian Space Research Organisation among others, the committee has drawn a naught. ``We have not given up hope. We are expecting these agencies to pool in money in coming days,'' said Patwardhan. However, he promptly quipped, ``in case we are unable to generate the adequate funds, we will have to cut down on the expenditure part by curtailing the side events,'' he added.