146-year-old engineering institute to spend Rs 6 crore on structure

Students and visitors to the College of Engineering Pune (CoEP) will be greeted by a spanking new building this October. Not waiting for the civic body to loosen its purse strings, the college authorities have decided to bear the Rs 6 crore that will be incurred to restore its 150-year-old building. The edifice, which comes under Grade I in the heritage list of the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC), was constructed in August 1865.


Salvaging the past: Renovation work is in progress at theu00a0 146-year-old
institute. Pic/Krunal Gosavi

The conservation work has been by internationally renowned architect Abha Lamba. The restoration work which started two months ago shall continue till October."We are spending the money for renovation from our own pocket. Fortunately, we have our own corpus fund in the government treasury under the head of Public Ledger Accounts (PLA), which we are spending for the restoration. Being a premier engineering institute, we were expecting some help from the PMC, but we had to face many hurdles to get an approval for repairs of CoEP's main building," Dr Anil Sahastrabuddhe, director of CoEP.