Chandigarh November 16:
It is still the waiting time for the engineering aspirants to get their full fledged IIT in the northern region at Ropar in Punjab.
The estimated time to complete the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Ropar campus comprising all facilities including libraries and laboratory is around 10 years, said Punjab Chief Secretary SC Aggarwal while talking with media. IIT-Ropar is one of the mega projects of the Central Government in the direction of higher education in the northern region of India. Once completed, the institute is likely to emerge as a hub of technical education in this region.
Aggarwal said: "The permanent campus of IIT-Ropar will be delivered to the students in the mid of 2012. The students of the first batch (2008) are taking their classes in the temporary campus in Rupnagar provided by the Government of Punjab." "The new campus would be adequate in terms of facilities such as laboratories and experimental rooms and would compete with facilities in other IITs in Kanpur, Roorkee, Banglore and Delhi once ready," added Aggarwal.
This new institute in 525 acres of land was established by the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) in 2008. The proposed location for IIT-Ropar is Birla Seed Farms. The classes for the academic session of 2008-2009 were held at IIT_Delhi. The institute is now functional at its transit campus in Ropar. The foundation stone of IIT-R was laid down on February 24, 2009 by former Union HRD Minister Arjun Singh.
From the second year onwards, IIT-Ropar students were shifted to the temporary campus at a women's polytechnic in Ropar. The second academic session started from August 20, 2009. The curriculum for the rest of the semesters was given to the students on the day of their registration. Union HRD Minister Kapil Sibal recently met the directors of eight new IITs at Ropar, Bhubneshwar, Gandhinagar, Hyderabad, Patna, Jodhpur, Mandi, and Indore to discuss the teething problems they were facing. As many of these institutes are presently functioning from temporary campuses, the directors told the Minister of the constraints they face regarding infrastructure and faculty.
According to the Government sources, a number of IITs are facing problems of clearances with Central and State Government departments for acquisition of the land allotted to them. In this regard, the Minister has asked for a meeting to be taken next month with the concerned State Government officials, Central Government officials and IIT directors to facilitate the process of land acquisition.
The new IITs also felt that a revision in fund allocation would be required in view of the escalation of construction costs. Sibal has directed the officials to examine the matter and come up with a proposal in this regard also. It has learnt that these IITs were allotted Rs 500 crore as funds, may need another Rs 200 crore. On the lines of the recent concession to IIM-Ahmedabad on topping up the faculty salary, the new IITs have also been allowed to top up the faculty salary from their own funds, but only after the Union HRD Minister Sibal's approval. Sibal also urged the IITs to complete the construction of new campuses by 2014.
It is still the waiting time for the engineering aspirants to get their full fledged IIT in the northern region at Ropar in Punjab.
The estimated time to complete the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Ropar campus comprising all facilities including libraries and laboratory is around 10 years, said Punjab Chief Secretary SC Aggarwal while talking with media. IIT-Ropar is one of the mega projects of the Central Government in the direction of higher education in the northern region of India. Once completed, the institute is likely to emerge as a hub of technical education in this region.
Aggarwal said: "The permanent campus of IIT-Ropar will be delivered to the students in the mid of 2012. The students of the first batch (2008) are taking their classes in the temporary campus in Rupnagar provided by the Government of Punjab." "The new campus would be adequate in terms of facilities such as laboratories and experimental rooms and would compete with facilities in other IITs in Kanpur, Roorkee, Banglore and Delhi once ready," added Aggarwal.
This new institute in 525 acres of land was established by the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) in 2008. The proposed location for IIT-Ropar is Birla Seed Farms. The classes for the academic session of 2008-2009 were held at IIT_Delhi. The institute is now functional at its transit campus in Ropar. The foundation stone of IIT-R was laid down on February 24, 2009 by former Union HRD Minister Arjun Singh.
From the second year onwards, IIT-Ropar students were shifted to the temporary campus at a women's polytechnic in Ropar. The second academic session started from August 20, 2009. The curriculum for the rest of the semesters was given to the students on the day of their registration. Union HRD Minister Kapil Sibal recently met the directors of eight new IITs at Ropar, Bhubneshwar, Gandhinagar, Hyderabad, Patna, Jodhpur, Mandi, and Indore to discuss the teething problems they were facing. As many of these institutes are presently functioning from temporary campuses, the directors told the Minister of the constraints they face regarding infrastructure and faculty.
According to the Government sources, a number of IITs are facing problems of clearances with Central and State Government departments for acquisition of the land allotted to them. In this regard, the Minister has asked for a meeting to be taken next month with the concerned State Government officials, Central Government officials and IIT directors to facilitate the process of land acquisition.
The new IITs also felt that a revision in fund allocation would be required in view of the escalation of construction costs. Sibal has directed the officials to examine the matter and come up with a proposal in this regard also. It has learnt that these IITs were allotted Rs 500 crore as funds, may need another Rs 200 crore. On the lines of the recent concession to IIM-Ahmedabad on topping up the faculty salary, the new IITs have also been allowed to top up the faculty salary from their own funds, but only after the Union HRD Minister Sibal's approval. Sibal also urged the IITs to complete the construction of new campuses by 2014.
