PATNA, Aug. 28 -- Bihar chief minister Samrat Choudhary on Thursday announced setting up of the state's first "Women's University" with only women holding administrative positions and all students being girls. Giving his best wishes for Raksha Bandhan, the CM took to X to make the announcement. "The university will give new shape to the dreams of girls by equipping them with education and leadership potential, skill development and self confidence, and knowledge with self-reliance," he posted. "The university will have women only - right from the vice chancellor to teachers/officials and students," he added soon after his visit to Magadh Mahila College in Patna to lay the foundation stone of G+6 science block and auditorium. "Women are engines of Bihar's growth and that is why they are the government's priority. The fellowship scheme, credit card scheme and other incentives are all meant for encouraging girls to excel in varied fields and they have shown the promise," he said, exhorting girls to speak up about their needs so that the government could address them. Buoyed by the highest decadal growth in female literacy and significant increase in the number of girls passing class X and XII board examinations, Bihar had planned its first women's university way back in 2011 itself. Later in 2014, the likely elevation of premiere Patna Women's College (PWC) under the then announced Centre's cluster university plan gathered momentum. However, Bihar's plan remained on the back burner. The matter had surfaced during PWC's annual day function in 2014 when the then CM Nitish Kumar responded to the request of the then principal of the college, Sister Dorris D'Souza AC that PWC should be made state's first women's university on the lines of Shreemati Nathibai Damodar Thackersey Women's University (SNDT), Mumbai. Over 100-year-old SNDT Women's University, with multiple campuses, colleges, university departments and huge enrolment, has the distinction of being the first women's university not only in India, but in south-east Asia. In Bihar, the earlier plan was to have all women's colleges of the state under one umbrella of a women's university on the lines of Aryabhatt Knowledge University (AKU), but now it remains to be seen how the government goes about it. "The AKU experiment did not work as envisaged and the government had to trifurcate it with separate universities for engineering, health and sports, and that perhaps came in the way of a separate women's university. The creation of three other state universities - Pataliputra University, Purnea University and Munger University- also did not serve the desired purpose," said a senior official of the education department. Later, the CM also announced installation of one-lakh solar panels on the houses of Jeevika Didis under the PM Surya Ghar Yojana to create another earning avenue for them and reduce their electricity expenditure to zero. "This is a gift to them on Raksha Bandhan," he added....