The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : IIT-Medak to be inaugurated on August 8

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Tamil Nadu - Chennai

IIT-Medak to be inaugurated on August 8

Priscilla Jebaraj

IIT-Madras is scrambling to register it

CHENNAI: The foundation for the Indian Institute of Technology at Medak will be laid by Union Minister for Human Resource Development Arjun Singh on August 8, though the institute does not legally exist yet.

In the three weeks before that date, the new IIT’s mentor institute, IIT-Madras, is scrambling to register it and make preparations for the launch. The seven existing IITs come under the Institute of Technology Act, 1961. When the eight new IITs were announced earlier this year, the plan was to amend the Act to include them. However, that requires going back to Parliament, and the process was sought to be speeded up through a Cabinet note, says IIT-Madras Director M.S. Ananth. The note has been prepared, but with the government’s preoccupation with the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal, the note has not yet been cleared, he says.

So instead, the new IITs will come under legislation enacted a century earlier, the Societies Registration Act, 1860. “We hope to form the societies in another week or so,” says Dr. Ananth. The IIT-Madras itself was a society when it began in 1959.

Without the settlement of legal status, some of the preparations for IIT-Medak are being hampered. While the site for the institute has been identified, it has not yet been handed over by the Collector, “because there is no legal body to hand it over to,” says David Koilpillai, a professor at IIT-Madras, who is co-chairing the taskforce for IIT-Medak. Land acquisition is also still in progress, with 540 acres already acquired near Kandi, 50 km from Hyderabad.

Across the National Highway from the site of the new IIT however, more than 300 labourers are working 24 hours a day in shifts to convert schools, sheds and homes at the Medak ordinance factory into classrooms, laboratories, workshops and hostels, where 116 students will begin their IIT experience on August 20. The institute will operate out of this temporary venue for the next two years.

“The basic equipment and facilities will be the same as what an IIT-Madras student gets,” promises Dr. Koilpillai. While he is confident that the infrastructure will be in place, permanent faculty have not yet been hired. Instead, first-year students will be welcomed by a team of at least eight faculty members from IIT-Madras, who will make the trip to Medak every week to teach them.

While some potential new staff members have been identified from those applying for positions at IIT-Madras, they will not be hired until the institute is legally formed, and a director is appointed. “First we need a director. We need the senior people in place to set the vision,” says Dr. Koilpillai.

The focus in the first year will be on teaching, creating a master plan for the new campus and, once the new director is appointed, hiring faculty and beginning research activities.

In the early years, some research projects may be incubated at IIT-Madras. Once the new campus is ready in 2010, assuming the building is completed as per schedule, postgraduate programmes will be started.

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