Union Cabinet nods for creating eight new IITs

The road to setting up new eight Indian Institute of Technology (IITs) in eight states got clearance on Thursday with Union Cabinet's approval for setting up of IITs in Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, Orissa, Gujarat, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and one at Indore in Madhya Pradesh. The total costs would incur burden of Rs 6080 crore on Centre's exchequer or Rs 760 crore will be spent in the construction of each IITs for over a period of six years.

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Besides these eight new IITs, the Institute of Technology at Banaras Hindu University (BHU) will be converted into an IIT. The Cabinet also approved for forming of Societies for creating legal entities for the new IITs.

The academic sessions will begin from July 23. But the IITs in Indore and Himachal Pradesh are likely to commence their sessions from the next academic year of 2009-10. Both state administrations have identified about 600 acres of land for the location of the new IITs.

In case of Andhra Pradesh and Bihar, the Central Government has approved the site recommended by the State Government while in the rest of the cases, the Site Selection Committee will inspect the offered sites in due course and will give its recommendations to the Ministry.

The study programme will be done at the temporary campuses till the construction of new IIT buildings.

The Cabinet also nodded for the creation of one post each of Director, at a fixed monthly pay scale of Rs 26,000 and, Registrar in the grade of Rs. 16,400-22,400 for each of the new IITs and also gave approval for creation of 30 faculty posts per year in the first three years. The Directors' grade has been increased by Rs 1000 from Rs 25,000 to Rs 26,000.

The new IITs will benefit in increasing the output of high quality Engineering and Science graduates, post graduates and Ph.D.s, Teachers for Engineering and Science subjects at College/University level and R&D and Intellectual Property generation in Engineering and Science.

With the creation of these new IITs a number of more bright students will be able to get high quality education. As of now, hardly 2% of about three lakh students who appear in Joint Entrance Test (JEE) of IITs get admissions in IITs.

It would also address State/Region specific technology related problems of States/UTs situated in the IITs’ “Zones”.