The Indian Institute of Management (IIM) in Ranchi, which has been operating out of a temporary campus at Suchna Bhawan for over a decade, will start running classes at its permanent campus in Dhurwa by mid-October, officials from the premiere business school said on Wednesday.
However, only half of the 1000-odd students currently pursing courses at the institute will be able to attend classes at the permanent campus owing to a lack of space to accommodate all the students in the hostel at the permanent campus, authorities from the institute said. The remaining students will attend classes at Suchna Bhawan.
“The hostels that have been constructed so far in the main campus can accommodate about 400 students. The students who stay in these hostels will attend classes in the main campus, while the remaining ones will attend classes at Suchna Bhawan,” said IIM-R Director Shailendra Singh.
The new campus is now ready with at least 10 classrooms, the director’s chamber, the administrative building, dining hall and faculty quarters. However, the lack of space in hostels continues to be a stumbling block in shifting all operations to the permanent campus, Singh said.
At present, IIM-R is using a facility in Khelgaon as hostel for its students, who travel by bus from Hotwar to Suchna Bhawan on Kanke Road every day to attend classes. Half of the students will continue to stay at the temporary hostels in Khelgaon even after classes begin in the permanent campus.
The institute currently runs at least six courses, including PhD and integrated MBA, and has students from places as far as Kerala and Rajasthan. It also offers executive management courses for working professionals, who mostly attend classes online.
IIM-R, the ninth IIM in India, was established in December 2009, and has been functioning from a temporary campus since then. The director of the institute admitted that the struggle to find a land for a permanent campus and eventually shifting to it has been a long and challenging one.
“We will start operating out of the new campus after Dussehra,” said Singh, adding that IIM authorities even looked for places around the new campus which could accommodate about 600 students, but failed to find any such property.
In December 2020, then Rajya Sabha MP Parimal Nathwani inaugurated the institute’s first building in the permanent campus, a fully air-conditioned auditorium spread over 40,000 square feet of area.