Odisha HRD

The better NITs and IT-BHU should be upgraded to IITs.

May 4th, 2007

Today, there is an opinion piece in Times of India that suggests that some of the best NITs and IT-BHU should be upgraded to IITs. I wrote along the same lines in an Indian Express op-ed article last year. This is discussed in more detail in the blog specifically on this topic. Here is a quick overview of the issue.
First a little bit of history (details): During the NDA government, PM Vajpayee on Aug 15, 2003 had announced setting up of 5 new IITs by upgrading promising academic institutions. They had a constituted a committee and a follow up committee gave its report that came out in 2006. This committee report, called the Anandkrishnan committee report, suggested seven institutions for upgradation to IIT like institutions, which they called IIESTs (Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology). These seven institutions were:

• Aligarh Muslim University — Zakir HussainCollege of Engineering and Technology, Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh;
• Andhra University — College of Engineering, Visakhapatanam, Andhra Pradesh;
• Banaras Hindu University — Institute of Technology (IT-BHU), Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh;
• Bengal Engineering College, Howrah, West Bengal;
• Cochin University of Science and Technology (CUSAT), Kochi, Kerala;
• Jadavpur University’s Engineering and Technology Departments, Kolkata, West Bengal; and
• Osmania University — College of Engineering and College of Technology, Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh.

Out of these seven Aligarh Muslim University — Zakir HussainCollege of Engineering and Technology and Jadavpur University’s Engineering and Technology Departments were considered infeasible due to space restrictions and the rest five are in the process of being converted to IIESTs.

Although these institutions were chosen based on objective evaluation, there was one big flaw in the proess: NITs, many of which are better than these five were not considered. This is unfair to these NITs.

Entry Filed under: IIT, oDishA,NIT, Rourkela,UCE Burla (became a university)