Tagore, a Nobel laureate, is one of the most revered icons from West Bengal, a state which will go to the assembly polls in the first half of the next year. 

In May 1951, Visva-Bharati was declared to be a Central University and an institution of national importance" by an Act of Parliament, the PMO noted. 

The university followed the pedagogy devised by Tagore, though gradually it evolved in the format in which modern universities developed elsewhere. 

The prime minister is the chancellor of the university.