As per the new admission criteria to NITs this year while 50% of seats will be reserved to the students from the state where the NIT is the remaining 50% will be open. In previous years the remaining 50% was broken apart and divided to various states. With this change the previous year (2007) opening and closing rank numbers may not be much helpful. This scheme will benefit the states from where students do well in AIEEE while will have a negative effect on the other states.
June 22nd, 2008
June 17th, 2008
Following is from Volume 2 of the expenditure of Budget 2008-09.
- NISER/IOP: The IOP+NISER budget (item 9.04 of the DAE budget) is 69 crores in plan + 9 crores in non-plan = 78 crores. The nornal IOP budget is about 20 crores. Hence, 50-58 crores is the budget for NISER in 2008-09. (Note that in 2007-08 IOP was allocated 32.75+7 crores and it spent 27.6+8 = 35.6 crores. I..e, Probably 15-18 crores were spent for NISER. )
- IISER: There is a budget of 150 crores (item 61 of the Higher education budget) for the five IISERs. (The budget for three of them was 125 crores in 2007-08, out of which only 60 crores was spent.)
- new IITs: There is a budget of 50 crores (item 60 of the Higher education budget) for the establishment of three new IITs. (The budget for them was 80 crores in 2007-08, out of which only 0.01 crores was spent.)
- new IIITs: There is a budget of 21.4 crores (item 57 of the Higher education budget) for the establishment of new IIITs.
- AIIMS-like: There is a total budget of 490 crores (item 26 of the Health ministry budget) for the establishment of 6 new AIIMS-like institutes and upgradation of 10 other institutes. In 2007-08 the budget for this was 150 crores out of which only 90 crores was spent; most of it went to the upgradation part.
- NITs: The budget for the NITs (item 69 of the Higher education budget) is 808 (plan) + 285 (non-plan) = 1093 crores. Rs 608 crores of that is for enhancing the number of students to account for the OBC quota.
- IITs: The budget for the IITs (item 38 of the Higher education budget) is 1171 (plan) + 525 (non-plan) = 1696 crores. Rs 771 crores of that is for enhancing the number of students to account for the OBC quota.
- IISc Bangalore: The budget for the IISc (item 41 of the Higher education budget) is 130 (plan) + 91 (non-plan) = 221 crores. Rs 70 crores of that is for enhancing the number of students to account for the OBC quota.
- UGC: The budget for UGC (item 3 of the Higher education budget) is 3095.5 (plan) + 2009.4 (non-plan) = 5104.9 crores. Rs 875 crores of that is for enhancing the number of students to account for the OBC quota.
- NIRTAR and other 6 institutes for blind, deaf, mentally retarded and orthopaedically handicapped: The budget for them (item 21 of Ministry of Social Justice budget) is 47+27.05 crores.
- IIST (Indian Inst. of Space Sc. & Tech): Its budget (item 12 of ministry of space) is 65.25 crores. 25 crores out of a budgeted 75 crores was spent in 2007-08.
- ISIs: Its budget (item 4 of ministry of statistics) is 22.5 + 51.96 crores.
- NIFT: Its budget (item 11.01 of ministry of Textile) is 31.75 + 10 crores.
- Tourism: Its budget for training (item 5 of Tourism ministry) is 71 + 0.8 crores. It includes 26 Institutes of Hotel management, 7 Foodcraft institutes, IITTM, and NIWS (National Institute of Water Sports).
- CIPET: Its budget (item 2 of Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizers) for the 15 centers is 31 crores.
- NIPER, Mohali: Its budget (item 7 of Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizers) is 75+15 crores.
- National Institute of design: Its budget for (item 3 of ministry of commerce) is only 0.25 crores. It was 20.25 crores in 2007-08. It seems the funding pattern has been changed. There is now 50 crores (item 7 of ministry of commerce) for project based support to autonomous institutions which includes NID and several other institutions.
February 29th, 2008
Following is an excerpt from a report in Pioneer. Tathya.in also has a report on this.
… The NIT’s alumni, who are placed in high and respectable places, have raised serious concern over the nomination of the chairman of its Board of Governors. The names recommended by the authorities for the post do not go well with the alumni, who are concerned about the future of the NIT.
The name of a Congress leader of little standing has been recommended by the Government for the top post, revealed Sandip Das Verma, a leading non-resident Oriya (NRO) and an alumnus of NIT. According to sources, Pramod Pradhan, who belongs to the Congress from Rourkela, has been recommended by the Government for the post of chairman along with two other persons.
The sources said three names such as Drona Rath, CMD of MECON and an alumnus of NIT, BN Singh, Managing Director of Rourkela Steel Plant and Pramod Pradhan have been recommended to the President of India. One these names will be picked up for the post.
In his reaction, Das Verma has raised serious doubts over the Government’s sincerity in raising the status of the NIT by recommending the name of a little-known politician for the top post of the premier institution. The NIT’s Board now has two eminent engineers, who are Padmashree and one of them NR Mohanty could have been recommended for the Chairman’s post, said a leading industrialist.
The immediate past chairman was Dr Banshidhar Panda, a top industrialist of the State. Biju Patnaik was also once the chairman of the NIT Board.
October 4th, 2007
Following are excerpts on this from the PIB that mainly talks about the establishment of a new steel center at IIT Kharagpur.
The Empowered committee also cleared a proposal to create a post of Chair professor in the Department of Metallurgy in IIT, Kharagpur, Benaras Hindu University and NITS at Rourkela, Durgapur and Jamshedpur and other institutes, where study of Metallurgical Engineering is pursued at a salary at par with the individual institute’s norm. These institutions will also provide scholarships to five undergraduate students in each of them to pursue studies in areas related to iron and steel. The undergraduate scholarships will carry a monthly stipend of Rs.4000 per month during the entire period of the course.
August 17th, 2007
Update: The NIT statutes based on this act was pubslished in the Gazette in April 2009. A copy of it is at https://www.orissalinks.com/bigfiles/NIT%20statutes.pdf. Thanks to the reader who commented on this.
The NIT (National Institutes of Technology) act becomes effective Aug 15 2007. There is a similar act for the IITs; but the NITs did not have one earlier. By virtue of this act NITs now become "Institutes of National Importance (INI)." Thus the proposed IIESTs, which will also be accorded INI status will not necessarily have a higher status than NITs.
August 14th, 2007
I came across this Allahbad bank site about education loans. They give loans up to 4 lakhs without any collateral security to students of a selected list of colleges/institutes. The current list includes four Orissa institutes. They are:
- AMITY Bhubaneshwar
- XIM Bhubneswhwar
- Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology (KIIT)
- NIT Rourkela
July 31st, 2007
From an NIT Rourkela faculty:
Our institute has become the first among all NITs to earn the trust of SBI to sanction study loan to our students by the NIT campus branch itself ( in stead of the branches located in their native places) without asking for any sort of security. This facility was earlier available only to reputed institutes like IIT and IIM under Scholar Plus Scheme.
The story behind how this was achieved:
This has become possible due to strong follow up and bargain made by our director insisting on exclusive new ATM counter in the campus, Internet banking facility to all students (now students need not stand in the queue to pay fees in cash/cheque either in institute or halls) and this study loan, otherwise we would have given permission to other banks to open their branches in the campus to break the monopoly of SBI since inception.
Tathya.in also reports on this.
(Thanks to Sandip babu for this information.)
July 18th, 2007
The following are some instructions about the previous posting titled "Orissa engineering colleges in the AICTE list and their number of seats (July 12 2007)."
It is from http://www.aicte.ernet.in/approval/engg_LIST/Orissa.doc (as of July 12 2007) reached via http://www.aicte.ernet.in/app_inst_new.htm after clicking the scrolling sentence in AICTE web page that says "Approval status 2007-08 as on 05-07-2007." The Orissa JEE counseling brochure has a few other colleges that are not in this list. For BPUT to put them in the Orissa JEE counseling brochure these colleges must have some sort of approval. Beyond that I can not guess why they are not in the latest AICTE list. Sometimes AICTE has multiple lists in its web pages. If people have doubts about these colleges they should ask BPUT to give them some written guarantee/proof regarding these colleges when counseling or during admission.
The last two columns of that article denote "Existing intake for 2006-07" and "Approved intake for 2007-08." Please note that they are not properly aligned. (I am having problems with the editor when copying and pasting from word documents.)
July 12th, 2007
Dataquest magazine has published its 2007 ranking. The Orissa Colleges in their ranking are:
- (16) NIT Rourkela : 24 in 2006, 17 in 2005
- (90) UCE Burla: 55 in 2006
- (108) CET Bhubaneswar: 47 in 2006
- (110) Orissa Engineering college, Bhubaneswar: 82 in 2006, 61 in 2005
Only NIT Rourkela improved its ranking from 2006; ranking of others have dropped.
NIT Rourkela also features in the top five engineering colleges in the eastern region. They are:
- (1) IIT Kharagpur
- (6) IIT Guwahati
- (14) Jadavpur University Engineering College
- (16) NIT Rourkela
- (19) BIT Ranchi
As always, these are just one ranking.
June 29th, 2007
(Update on June 17 2008: For guidance on what you can get with your Orissa JEE rank in 2008, please see https://www.orissalinks.com/archives/1185 I do not have more information than that.)
June 11 edition of Outllook has rankings of engineering colleges, medical colleges, and some specialty colleges. Only two Orissa colleges appear in those rankings. In the ranking of govt. engineering colleges NIT Rourkela appears at number 28 with a total score of 1437. In the ranking of private engineering colleges KIIT Bhubaneswar appears at 37 with a total score of 1073. If one were to combine both rankings then NIT Rourkela would be 32 as four private coleges have a higher score than NIT Rourkela. In the 2006 Outlook ranking of top 100 engineering colleges NIT Rourkela was 34 and KIIT was ranked 100. So NIT Rourkela improved by two positions. To figure out if KIIT improved its ranking one has to count how many private colleges were there in the 2006 top 100 ranking. A quick count, which may be slightly inaccurate as it is not easy to identify all private colleges in a list, shows that in 2006 KIIT was 50 among the private colleges; so it seems to have improved its ranking by 13 positions.
June 14th, 2007
Update: I thought this was new to NIT Rourkela. Based on the reader’s comments it seems it has been there for some time and it is also there at UCE Burla.
NIT Rourkela now allows students to change their branches after first year based on their grades and possibly subject to some rules. The students who were able to change this year are listed here. The top three changed to Computer Science. Branch changes were allowed at IIT Kharagpur based on first year performance and subject to a cap of 10% extra seat in each branch. I assumed a similar cap may be operational at NIT Rourkela. NIT Rourkela has close ties with IIT Kharagpur in that its director, Professor Sunil Sarangi, was a longtime facuty at IIT Kharagpur. Its great that he is bringing in good ideas from IIT Kharagpur and implementing them in NIT Rourkela. One idea, which was somewhat unique to IIT Kharagpur, and which should be brought to NIT Rourkela, if not already done, is the notion of a student budgeted hostel library.
June 11th, 2007
In an earlier post we mentioned that NITs will now become institutions of national importance. We have come across a draft of the NIT Bill and also the IIT Bill of 1961. It looks like the NIT Bill (draft) is a good one and has even some improvements over the IIT Bill. Once the NIT Bill is passed in the parliament it will become the NIT act.
May 21st, 2007
A PIB press release says among other things:
Shri Singh also informed that Parliament has also approved the Bill seeking to cover all National Institutes of Technology (NITs). They would be accorded status of institutes of national importance.
This is good news, as this may somewhat prevent the proposed IIESTs to have a higher status than the NITs, as IIESTs were to be accorded the status of “institutes of national importance.” Among the proposed IIESTs, IT-BHU is currently better than most or perhaps all the NITs; but many of the NITs are currently better than the other proposed IIESTs.
May 18th, 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.
Continue Reading May 4th, 2007
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