The Chhattisgarh Government has identified sites for permanent and temporary campuses for the proposed Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) at Durg (Bhilai) and New Raipur respectively. The Mentor Institute of the new IIT in Chhattisgarh would be IIT Hyderabad.
In the Union Budget Speech 2014-15, the Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitely had announced to set up five IITs in the Jammu, Chhattisgarh, Goa, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala and five IIMs in the States of Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Bihar, Odisha & Maharashtra.
The State Governments are to identify suitable land measuring about 500-600 acres which is to be allotted free of cost, free of legal encumbrances at a location having necessary infrastructure such as road, rail and air connectivity, physical infrastructure and basic-facilities for setting up of the IITs.
A budgetary provision of Rs.1000 Crore under Plan Head has been made for these institutes during the year, 2015-16. However, no expenditure as on date has been incurred in this regard.
The first academic session of the Institutes, whose sites for permanent and temporary campuses have been approved will commence from 2015-16.
Construction and completion of the new/permanent campuses will depend upon handing over of the land, free of any legal encumbrance by the respective State Governments. This information was given by the Union Human Resource Development Minister, Smriti Irani in a written reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha.
On the other hand, the process for development of Phase-I of the state-of-art campus of Indian Institute of Management (IIM) including its building Raipur will commence shortly, officials here stated.
The Phase-I of the campus is being developed at a cost of Rs 296.45 crore with the completion of the works being estimated within a period of two years, they stated. Significantly, the Chhattisgarh government had been focussing on providing an elaborate platform for various institutions to establish their state-of-art campus in the new administrative capital.
The State government itself is in the process of establishing the Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) in Naya Raipur. The first meeting of the Board of International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) — Naya Raipur was held in early March last year.
The IIIT has been established as a University, under a public-private partnership (PPP) model between the Government of Chhattisgarh and the National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC). The meeting was chaired by the newly appointed Chairman of IIIT, Ajai Chowdhry, the Founder of India’s leading IT company, HCl.
The IIIT Board set a target of commencing B. Tech. programmes, with 60 seats each in Computer Science and Information Technology, from academic session 2015-16.
For this, the Board set a target of completion of the Academic-cum-Administrative Block of IIIT by August 2014, and completion and commissioning, inclusive of 415-seater hostel accommodation, faculty residences, laboratories, lAN and library by April 2015.
The IIIT Board reviewed in-depth all activities being carried out by NTPC to this end. After the meeting, the Board members visited the campus under construction over an area of 25 acres, just 15 minutes away from Swami Vivekanand Airport, Raipur. It also initiated the process of appointment of Vice-Chancellor and Director of the University.
Moreover, the Board decided that, going forward, M.Tech. and Ph.D. programmes would also be initiated in IIIT, arrangements made for teaching over 1,000 students, and courses in multidisciplinary subjects allied with IT commenced.
The Board set the goal of developing IIIT, located in the futuristic new state capital Naya Raipur, being developed over an area of 237 square kilometres, as a world-class university equipped with faculty, infrastructure and student community of global standards. The Board members deliberated at length on how to evolve IIIT—Naya Raipur as one of the foremost IIITs in the country. It decided to associate with a leading IIIT as a Mentor Institute for the initial years.