The Hindu : National : Cabinet nod for two more science education and research institutes

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Friday, Oct 26, 2007
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Cabinet nod for two more science education and research institutes

Special Correspondent

To be set up by HRD Ministry in Thiruvananthapuram, Bhopal

Goal is to make education and careers in basic sciences attractive
1,396 ITIs to be upgraded through public-private partnership

NEW DELHI: The Union Cabinet on Thursday approved the setting up of two Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research in Thiruvananthapuram and Bhopal at a cost of Rs. 500 crore each.

Three such institutions have already been approved in Kolkata, Pune and Chandigarh.

Being established up by the Human Resource Development Ministry, these institutions will integrate undergraduate education, postgraduate education and research under one umbrella.

The goal is to make education and careers in basic sciences more attractive by providing opportunities in integrative teaching and learning of sciences and breaking the barriers of traditional disciplines.

The institutes will forge strong relationships with existing universities and colleges and network with laboratories and research institutions in order to share and complement faculty, research, library and computational facilities.

Each institution will have about 2,000 undergraduate students, postgraduate students and research scholars and about 200 faculty members, and have programmes called schools in the inter-disciplinary areas of computer, biological, mathematical, physical, chemical and materials sciences.

Chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the Cabinet meeting also cleared a proposal for extending the tenure of short service commission officers of the Armed Forces Medical Services (AFMS) from 10 to 14 years and for giving them time-scale promotions as applicable to permanent commissioned officers.

The decision is expected to mitigate shortage of officers in the AFMS.

The Cabinet gave its nod for amending Part 1 of the Schedule to the Constitution (Scheduled Tribes) (Union Territories) Order. By this, children born to inhabitants of Lakshadweep in any place in the mainland will also be deemed inhabitants born on the islands if they settle down there permanently.

The decision will benefit the children of the STs who resided outside the islands for employment or other reasons.

Simplified forms

The meeting cleared further changes to the bill, which seeks to provide relief to establishments employing up to 40 workers in maintaining registers and submitting returns under labour laws by introducing simplified forms.

The bill is pending in the Rajya Sabha.

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs, which also met on Thursday, gave in-principle approval for a scheme for upgrading 1,396 government ITIs through public-private partnership during the 11th Plan period.

It approved the implementation of the scheme for the first batch of 300 ITIs at a cost of Rs. 774 crore. For each ITI upgraded, an industry partner will be associated to lead the process.

The partners will be selected by the State governments in consultation with industry associations and they will be involved in all aspects of training from development of curriculum to trade testing.

The scheme aims at providing demand-driven training, leading to better employability of ITI graduates. It will also give greater academic and financial autonomy for the institutes to improve their efficiency.

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