New Delhi, July 17: The Union cabinet today approved eight new Indian Institutes of Technology, setting the bureaucratic ball rolling in officially recognising the new institutes, essential for them to offer courses with legal validity.

The human resource development ministry also indicated it will register the eight new IITs as societies by July 23, following which faculty and students can officially be hired for these institutes.

Bihar’s IIT will start classes on August 6 from a temporary facility in Patna, top officials at IIT Guwahati, the mentor for the new institute, told The Telegraph today.

The classes will be held at Navin Govt. Polytechnic, Patliputra Nagar, on a 45,000sqft campus, sources said. One hostel each for boys and girls will be made available next to the temporary academic area of IIT Patna. The permanent campus is to be built at Bihta, on the outskirts of Patna, over a 600-acre campus, sources said.

“We hope to move to the permanent campus by 2010,” a senior IIT Guwahati official said.

IIT Rajasthan plans to start classes on August 3 from the campus of its mentor IIT Kanpur, while a bhoomi puja has been planned for the IIT in Andhra Pradesh on August 8. But classes at the IIT in Andhra may start only later in the month, sources said.

IITs allocated to Punjab and Orissa are starting classes at the campuses of their mentor institutes — IIT Delhi and Kharagpur respectively. Their classes are scheduled to start with the academic session of their mentors, but may be delayed if the Centre fails to register the new institutes as societies by then, sources said.

IIT Gandhinagar, mentored by IIT Mumbai, will start classes from a temporary campus in the Gujarat capital —Vishwakarma Government Engineering College (VGEC), Chandkheda — sources at the mentor institute said.

“The hostels of the VGEC were rather dilapidated when we took over the campus. But now, we are almost ready to host students and provide them residential facilities till they move to a permanent campus,” a senior IIT Mumbai official said.

Following the cabinet approval today, the ministry announced it had also obtained clearance for the creation of 30 new faculty posts during the first three years at each of the new IITs. New IITs at Indore and Himachal Pradesh are likely to start classes next year, the ministry said.

The cabinet also decided to raise the pay grade for all IIT directors from Rs 25,000 (base fixed) to Rs 26,000 (base fixed.)