New Delhi, May 1: The Jamia Millia Islamia is adding a new name to its hall of fame.

Union Minister for Human Resource Development Arjun Singh will soon find himself in an elite club—which includes Noam Chomsky, Nelson Mandela and Fidel Castro— of people after whom the university has named a building or a road.

In fact, Singh will have a building and a road named after him.

For Jamia, this is a gesture of gratitude for his “generous contribution towards the development of the university.”

So, on Friday, among the Noam Chomsky Complex, Castro Garden Court and Nelson Mandela House, University Grants Commission Chairman SK Thorat will inaugurate the Arjun Singh Centre for Distance and Open Learning.

Singh also will be on the campus on Friday to inaugurate the Chomsky Complex.

Vice-Chancellor Mushirul Hasan makes no bones about the varsity’s gesture towards Singh. “He is our university’s greatest benefactor after Independence. No education minister has taken such active interest in Jamia’s development as he has. Soon after I joined as vice-chancellor of the university, he announced a one-time grant of Rs 40 crore for the university. In the last three years, 13 research centres have come up on the campus, all thanks to MHRD and, of course, the UGC. Now, this is our way of telling him ‘Thank you very much’,” Hasan said.

That’s not all. Even a road leading to the Mujeeb Bagh Teachers’ Housing Complex on the campus—Shahrah-i-Arjun Singh—has been named after him. The road will be inaugurated by Prof M Rais Khan, president of the Jamia Teachers’ Association (JTA), which has blamed the MHRD ministry for denying “minority status to the university” and filed a petition before the National Commission for Minority Educational Institutions on the matter.

But Khan says his joining the university administration’s thanksgiving efforts would not dilute JTA’s opposition to the OBC quota.

“A number of buildings have been named after various people on the campus. We have opposed such moves in academic council in the past but now that there is already a precedent of naming buildings after people, I see no harm in naming one after Arjun Singh since he is giving so much money to the varsity. But make no mistake: our issues with his ministry still remain. If he tries to implement the OBC quota, we won’t let that happen on this campus,” said Khan.

Hasan is not bothered about the controversies generated by Singh after the quota row. “He (Arjun Singh) may be controversial but then, so were Jawaharlal Nehru, Gandhi and Subhash Chandra Bose!” he says.