Odisha HRD

Bata Kishore Ray joins as IIT Bhubaneswar registrar

He was previously at the MHRD. See here.

5 comments January 1st, 2009

Union minister of state for Coal says medical college in Talcher to come up in next academic year

Following is an excerpt from a report in expressbuz.com.

Union Minister of State for Coal Santosh Bagrodia today said small and medium-scale industries and coal-based power plants will be supplied coal as per necessity.

Addressing newsmen here, the Minister maintained that there is no shortage of coal in the country.

… Mahanadi Coalfields Limited (MCL) would adopt two ITIs and set up a medical college at Talcher.The medical college will be set up before the new academic session. The Minister informed the Chief Minister about these decisions.

1 comment December 29th, 2008

Agriculture College to come up in Bhawanipatna

Following is an excerpt from a report in tathya.in.

… The Chief Minister decided to assuage the hurt feelings of the people of Kalahandi by announcing two professional colleges in the district.

Mr.Patnaik chairing the high level meeting here on 27 December announced to set up an engineering and a new agriculture college at Bhawanipatna.

…Sensing the popular demand for more educational facilities in the district, Mr.Patnaik declared that “there will be an agriculture and engineering college at Bhawanipatna”.

Funds will be located from Special Problem Fund (SPF) for both these institutions.

Both the colleges were provided Rs.5 crore each to take up preliminary works.

The engineering college will have 240 seats, where as the agriculture college will accommodate 48 students, revealed an official.

There are 63 engineering colleges, where as this will be the third agriculture college in the state, said he.

Two agriculture colleges exist at Bhubaneswar in Khurda district and Chiplima in Sambalpur district.

The College of Agriculture, Bhawanipatna will be under the Orissa University of Agriculture Technology (OUAT).

… Mr.Patnaik also asked Dr.Arabinda Padhee, Director Agriculture to take up the matter with VC OUAT for facilitating the students to enroll them in 2009-10.

Dr.Padhee gave out details on the planning process on establishing the new institution.

Tarun Kanti Mishra, Development Commissioner who attended the meeting will co-ordinate the land alienation and construction work in a faster manner.

13 comments December 28th, 2008

IIIT Bhubaneswar plans to offer B.Tech from next year: Sambada

December 26th, 2008

IGIT Sarang advertises for thirty four faculty positions

1 comment December 26th, 2008

Site visit team for IIT Bhubaneswar concludes their visit; picks Argul

Update: Excerpts from a report in Kalinga Times.

Aragul near Jatni has been finally chosen as the place for setting up of the Indian Institute of Technology, Bhubaneswar.

A four-member Central team sent by the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development selected Aragul after visiting four different places.

The team comprised Ashok Thakur, Additional Secretary in the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development; Damodar Acharya, Director of IIT Kharagpur; A.K. Dey, former Director of IIT Mumbai; and K. Narayan Rao, Secretary of All-India Council for Technical Education (AICTE).

The place selected is 12 km from Bhubaneswar airport by road and four km away from Jatni railway junction.

Following are excerpts from a report in tathya.in.

Ashok Thakur is impressed with Argul.

The Chairman of the Site Selection Committee for the IIT-Bhubaneswar found the site near Jatni a ‘nice’ one.

… The State Government has identified Argul near Jatni and Malipada near Khurda.

Both are in Khurda district.

Secondly Ramdaspur near Naraj and Dampada near Banki in Cuttack district were also identified for the purpose.

Mr.Thakur himself visited Argul on 25 December and expressed satisfaction over the place, said sources.

It is 891 acre of land out of which 500 acres are readily available.

Very near to the Capital city and well connected with rail and road.

Institutions like NISER, various engineering colleges and other institutions are coming up in the near by area.

This place was favored by the State Government for the IIT-Bh as the most suitable one.

It looks very likely that Argul will be chosen for the IIT site. But the others sites would soon come into play; especially for the world class central university (national university).

December 25th, 2008

IIT Bhubaneswar temporary and expected permanent location

(This is inspired by the post http://iitbbs.blogspot.com/2008/12/latest-news.html.)

The IIT Bhubaneswar will be temporarily located in the IIT Kharagpur Extension Center. It is located 1km from the NH-5 Jaydev Vihar exit towards Nandan Kanan. It is behind Ginger hotel and Swosti Plaza hotel. Across these two hotels is the Trident Oberoi and about 300 mts away is the Mayfair lagoon Hotel. Each of these hotels have many nice restaurants. About 700 mts from IIT location is the Pal Heights shopping complex that has a very good restaurant as well as an Oxford book store. About 500 mts the other direction is the Sandy’s Square which has a Smoking Joes Pizza.

Next to the IIT location is the Shyamasam Dham, one of the Main Ashrams of Jagadguru Kripalu Parishat.

About 150-200 mts to the IIT location is Gandhi Park and Janata Maidan. The later can be a ground to play outdoor games such as Cricket, Football and Hockey.

The IIT location is in the North east corner of the large Institute of Mineral and Materials Technology (formerly RRL) campus. It is expected that the IIT students will have access to this campus and some of its amenities including its outdoor  playing areas. The Kalinga Stadium and its swimming pool is about 1.5 kms from the IIT location.

The Maharaja theater is 2 kms away. XIMB (Basketball, Tennis courts, Football ground, auditorium) is 600 mts away. Institute of Physics  is 700 mts away. Utkal University is 1 km away.

The ESI Hospital is about 250 mts from the IIT location and Kalinga Hospital is about 1 kms away. (Next to Kalinga Hospital is the Institute of Life Sciences and Regional Medical research Center).

Following are some maps. In the maps with one big red dot, the dot indicates the location of the temporary campus of the IIT Bhubaneswar. In the maps with two red marks, the larger mark indicates the expected permanent location of IIT Bhubaneswar.

December 24th, 2008

Colleges in Angul, Cuttack and Dhenkanal districts

Following is from http://www.utkal-university.org/utkal%20university/Academic/colleges.htm.

ANUGUL DISTRICT

CUTTACK DISTRICT

DHENKANAL DISTRICT

December 23rd, 2008

Efforts on to make Khallikote a unitary university

Following are excerpts from a report in tathya.in.

With UCE Burla granted the Unitary State University (USU) status, lawmakers of southern Orissa have urged the Chief Minister to declare the century-old Khallikote Autonomous College (KAC) in Berhampur, an USU. 

The KAC has been the Center of Learning and intellectual pursuits in Orissa since long. 

Lawmakers including Sugyani Kumari Deo, R CC Patnaik, Bikram Kesari Arukh, Usha Devi, Ladu Kishore Swain, Bharat Paik, Niranjan Pradhan and Saroj Kumar Padhi have requested the Chief Minister to take up the matter to the next Cabinet. 

All of them have appealed Naveen Patnaik to upgrade the institution from autonomous status to USU. 

The Chief Minister has asked the Higher Education department to take up the case. 

Accordingly Madhu Sudan Padhi, Commissioner-cum-Secretary Higher Education has processed the file, said sources. 

A Cabinet Note is being prepared for the purpose, revealed an official. 

Most likely the proposal will be accepted, thanks to the elections round the corner. 

Than Orissa will have 3 unitary universities with Ravenshaw and UCE Burla (VSS) Unitary University earlier given the status. 

The KAC which started in 1856 as a Zilla School is now a full fledged Post Graduate College having autonomous status since 1990.

6 comments December 23rd, 2008

Berhampur University to collaboarte with BARC to study impact of radiation on plants

Following is an excerpt from a report in Hindu.

Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) and Berhampur University have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to study positive impacts of radiation on plants.

… The BARC has chosen four centres in the country to take up reasearch on impact of ionizing radiation on non-human biota, especially on plants of human benefit. The four centres are IARI, New Delhi, Agricultural University, Hyderabad, BARC Mumbai and Botany department of Berhampur University.

… The BARC has already released Rs. 40 lakh for installation of a ‘Gamma Irradiater’ in a ‘Gamma Chamber’ to be established on the university campus.

… Prof Brahma Bihari Panda, coordinator of the project, said under the project they would experiment on bringing in positive mutational changes in different plant breeds beneficial to humans. Both ultra violent rays and gamma radiation affect plants. But here mutational changes would be brought in through controlled use of ionizing gamma radiation.

These experiments may bring in genetic mutant changes in major crop breeds to make them more productive, pest resistant and environment friendly. It would also provide ways to preservation capacity of different plant products, including food grains and vegetables through peaceful use of radiation.

The Gamma Chamber of the project could also be used for sterilisation of medical waste and other hazardous bio-waste. Prof. Sahu felt the Gamma unit could also be an income generator for the university as this unit could also be used by other organisations for a service charge.

4 comments December 22nd, 2008

KIIT School of Biotechnology has faculty involved in research

KIIT School of Biotechnology  has faculty that are  involved in research. Following is its current faculty list that I obtained from http://www.kiitbiotech.ac.in/faculty.htm. All faculty with the rank of Senior Lecturer and above have Ph.Ds and many are with multi-year post-doctoral experience abroad. I think this school may soon challenge the Institute of Life Sciences, Bhubaneswar in term of research.

Would not it be wonderful if KIIT builds up similarly in Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry and challenges NISER?

20 comments December 21st, 2008

Orissa government plans a government engineering college in Kalahandi near Bhawanipatna

Following is from tathya.in.

Finally KBK region will have a Government sponsored engineering college.

And this will be established here in the district Headquarters of Kalahandi.

Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik has given green signal to this effect.

The Industries department has moved the files so that the institution receives approval of AICTE.

The authorities are eying to enroll students in 2009-10 in four streams, once the AICTE approval is availed.

The Collector has been asked to locate 30 acres of land near Bhawanipatna.

At least 10 acres of land is required for an engineering college but keeping in future expansion, the State Government has asked the Collector Kalahandi to do the needful.

Chief Minister has asked the Finance department to provide Rs.4 crore from the Orissa Contingency Fund (OCF).

Recently the OCF has been allowed to enlarge its kitty to Rs.400 crore.

There are 63 engineering colleges in the state and 2 in KBK. 

Most of the engineering colleges are in Khurda district, which houses 34.

There are no government engineering colleges in KBK and keeping this in view the Chief Minister has approved the Kalahandi Engineering College in this part of KBK, said an official.

This engineering college will be constituent college of Biju Patnaik University of Technology (BPUT).

6 comments December 20th, 2008

Koraput as a location for a central university

Now that Koraput has been announced by the CM as well as in the assembly as the location for a central university, lets be happy about it. I know some of the other districts who wanted the central university to be there may have reasons to be unhappy. My suggestion to them, especially for people (and my friends) from Kalahandi, is to continue their efforts for a new central university and pursue other avenues such as a state university and a BPIET. 

Now celebrating Koraput, following are some good aspects of Koraput.

• Koraput area is a cluster of several towns which could become a sizeable metropolitan area in the near future. As per the population numbers in this site and this site the towns around Koraput and their population are: Jeypore: 84,136 (20 km from Koraput); Koraput: 39,523; Sunabeda: 62,706 (20 km from Koraput); and Damanjodi: 8,475. The total may now surpass 200,000.
• The Kolab resorvoir is a picturesque area for a central university. The university is proposed to be between Koraput at Sunabeda on the bank of this resorvoir.

December 19th, 2008

Land identified in Koraput for Central University; Branch of IGNTU proposed for Phulbani

The following is from Samaja.

It is high time people of Kalahandi go to the CM for higher education institutes in Kalahandi. In particular they should demand a state university and a centrally funded BPIET (Biju Patnaik Inst of Engineering and Technology) in the line of SLIET and ABA Ghani Khan Choudhury IET.  The people of Kalahandi need to be strategic in terms of what they can get at this time. For example, UCE Burla supporters initially, for several years, were going after a deemed university status. It was going very slowly. Once they switched to demanding for state unitary university status, things happened fast. Similarly, people of Kalahandi should realize that they should not put all their egg in one basket.  IMHO, shifting of the location from Koraput to Kalahandi after the location is announced by the CM and mentioned in the assembly is unlikely, and I hope I am wrong, but a new central university in Kalahandi has a low chance of happening soon. So as a practical matter people of Kalahandi should, for now, ask for a state university and a BPIET. They don’t have to retract their demand for a central university; that can continue.

16 comments December 19th, 2008

UCE becomes Vir Surendra Sai University of Technology

Following from a report in Pioneer.

The Burla Engineering College has been accorded with a Unitary University status. A Bill to this effect on Wednesday got the nod of the State Assembly. After passing of the Bill, the university is now known as Vir Surendra Sai University of Technology.

As per the provision of the bill, a Management Committee, Academic Council of Studies, Finance Committee and other necessary committee, which is deemed to be necessary for the functioning of the university, would be set up.

One Vice-Chancellor, Registrar, Controller of Finance, Controller of Examination, Students’ Welfare Dean would be appointed. However, the Vice-Chancellor would be appointed on the recommendation of the Chancellor.

6 comments December 18th, 2008

INSPIRE fellowship letter to NISER

Thanks to Debu for this.

5 comments December 17th, 2008