Sunday, July 16, 2006
Business standard: IIT Kharagpur plans for a third campus (does not mention where)
This article does not mention where the third campus will be. Chitta ============= IIT Kharagpur plans third campus |
| Arnab Mallick / Kolkata July 14, 2006 |
| Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur (IIT-KGP) is in an expansion mode. |
| The oldest among all the IITs is firming up plans for setting up its third campus while the foundation stone laying for the second was being planned. |
| The third campus would be the second outside Kharagpur, the first being Rajarhat. |
| The expansion plans will mitigate the negative impact of the proposed quota on general candidates for other backward classes (OBC) in 20 central universities, the IITs and IIMs. |
| As of now, apart from the existing quota of 22.5 per cent for schedule caste and schedule tribe, this additional 27 per cent OBC quota will leave only 50.5 per cent for general candidates, if other quota are neglected. |
| Sanjiv Goenka, chairman of the board of governors, IIT-KGP hinted that the third campus could be as big as the one coming up in Rajarhat. |
| "We will be setting up another campus after Rajarhat. The details of the campus will be finalised shortly," he added. |
| Goenka noted that IIT-KGP would be focusing on few major strategies namely, infrastructure building, research and development (R&D), expansion of IIT-KGP campus outside Kharagpur and capacity expansion. In line with the focus plan, IIT-KGP's first campus outside Kharagpur would be set up in Rajarhat. "The total cost of setting up the campus will be Rs 250 crore. Foundation stone of the new campus, spread over 10 acres, would be laid before September 2006. Classes in the new campus were likely to commence from 2008-09," said Goenka. IIT-KGP had already received the first tranche of fund of Rs 25 crore from the ministry of human resources and development.Sisir K Dube, director, IIT-KGP said, "To begin with, the student intake would be 600 but would be later scaled to 2,500 students. |
| Meanwhile, the IIT-KGP student strength was likely to double over the next four years. |
| "IIT-KGP has already increased students intake by 34 per cent which implied 625 extra students this year. The current student strength is 7,000 as compared to last year's figure of 5,600. We will be doubling the student strength within the next four years," Goenka said. |
| This decision was though taken before the recent announcement related to introduction 27 per cent reservation for OBC, confirmed sources in IIT-KGP. |
| Referring to R&D projects at IIT-KGP, Goenka informed that the institute had received 171 research projects and 152 consultancy project worth Rs 52 crore last year. |
| Dube said, "IIT-KGP was currently undertaking research and consultancy projects around Rs 300 crore. In the last three years, IIT-KGP had bagged projects worth more than Rs 200 crore." |
| The target for the current year was significantly higher that last year's performance of Rs 52 crore, Goenka added. |
