The Hindu : Front Page : No move to create more IITs: panel chief

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Tuesday, Dec 13, 2005

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No move to create more IITs: panel chief

Staff Reporter

Centre has no plan to create more IITs: panel chief

KOCHI: Some of the educational institutions in the country will be upgraded to international standards for meeting the requirements of the next couple of decades, M. Anandakrishnan, head of the three-member committee appointed by the Union Ministry of Human Resources and Development (MHRD) to review the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) projects, has said.

Addressing presspersons after his visit to the Cochin University of Science and Technology (Cusat) here on Monday, he said the Union Government's decision was not to create more IITs. He said IITs, being institutions of higher excellence, could be treated as benchmarks for development.

Cusat, along with Jadhavpur University, Bengal University, Benares University, Aligarh University, Agra University and Osmania University, was selected as institutions with reasonable chance of upgrading to international standards. The committee will submit its evaluation report to the MHRD before January-end.

Those institutions selected by the committee will be called by a common name, just like IIT.

"There were suggestions like Indian Institute of Science and Technology and Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, but nothing has been finalised," he said. The committee visited all the institutions identified for upgrading.

No rigid guidelines

Mr. Anandakrishnan said there were no rigid guidelines for the upgradation process.

Other committee members D.V. Singh, former Vice-Chancellor of Roorkee University, and M. Amitabh Ghosh, emeritus professor, IIT, Kanpur, along with P.K. Abdul Azis, Vice-Chancellor, Cusat, were also present.

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