After financial arrangements were put in place on Friday, decks have been cleared for the the setting up of country’s premier information technology institute, Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) in Una district.
The institute was waiting for its financial clearance for long, despite identification of land for the campus.
On Friday, a meeting with industries minister Mukesh Agnihotri, chief secretary Sudripto Roy and other officials took place in which financial arrangements were discussed and finalized.
According to the previous financial arrangements the institute was to be constructed on Public Private Partnership (PPP) mode with the total budget of Rs80 crore.
The financial contribution ratio was fixed as, 25 percent by State, 25 percent by industries and 50 percent by Central Government. The difficulty was that State was unable to find some suitable industries to contribute into the fund for the premier institute.
After discussions on Friday, it was decided that since private companies are not coming forward then Public Sector Undertaking (PSUs) should be roped in to provide funds for the premier institute.
“We decided that apart from a Bombay based IT Company Rolta which is contributing Rs5 crore, power companies like Himachal Pradesh Power Corporation limited
(HPPCl) and Himachal Pradesh Transmission Corporation limited (HPTCl) will contribute the funds for the institute,” said Roy.
He said that financial arrangements was the major glitch in setting up of the institute as other issues like land acquisition for campus and other technicalities have been done.
“State only needed bank guarantees but no private companies were coming forward in the initiative to set-up a premier Information Technology institute of national repute in the State,” added Roy.
He said that there are some changes to be made in the board of directors of the institute like inclusion of some new names, which is a paper work after which a tri-partite MoU is likely to be signed by next week.
With the setting up of the institute, State will have several higher education institute
of national repute like Central University at Kangra, Indian Institute of Technology at Mandi and National Institute of Fashion Designing at Hamirpur, Hydro-engineering institute at Bilaspur and National Institute of Technology (NIT) at Hamirpur.