IT-BHU: Awaiting elite label

New Delhi, Feb. 24: The Banaras Hindu University (BHU) has told the Centre it is willing to lose its engineering wing to allow the institute’s conversion into an IIT.

Under pressure from agitating students who fear the promised IIT tag may prove elusive, the BHU has written to the human resource development ministry saying it has no objections to a cleavage from its Institute of Technology (IT), The Telegraph has learnt.

The UPA government last year announced plans to start eight new IITs and convert the BHU wing, IT-BHU, into an IIT.

But concerns raised at a January 28 meeting of the IIT Council that a separation from IT-BHU would hurt the university, one of India’s oldest, led to the government temporarily shelving the promised conversion. The concerns were first reported by The Telegraph.

Nuclear scientist R. Chidambaram, member of the Prime Minister’s Scientific Advisory Council, had argued that IT-BHU must retain its link to BHU.

“Our letter to the HRD ministry, we hope, will help clarify concerns that arose as a consequence of the delay in the upgrade of IT-BHU into an IIT,” a BHU official said.

A copy of the letter has also been sent to IT-BHU, where students went on protests against the ministry’s move to place the promise of conversion in deep freeze.

Vice-chancellor D.P. Singh is also learnt to have verbally communicated the university’s support for the upgrade at a meeting with HRD minister Arjun Singh last Friday.

Over a hundred students from IT-BHU have been camping in Delhi since February 10, petitioning top politicians across party lines to pressure the government into fulfilling its promise. “We didn’t ask for an IIT tag. But once the government has promised, it is duty-bound to convert IT-BHU into an IIT,” said Saurabh Kumar, a first-year computer science student.

Kumar and his friends have met Rahul Gandhi and Digvijay Singh from the Congress, BJP chief Rajnath Singh and CPM leader Brinda Karat. They plan to meet railway minister Lalu Prasad, too.

“Each day, we spread out in groups to meet as many MPs as possible. By night, we have to look for a roof over our heads,” said Vikas Kumar Pandey, a second-year electrical engineering student.

Several of his classmates, Kumar claimed, had joined the institute under the impression that the conversion would come through.

Many chose IT-BHU over the six new IITs started last year because of the institute’s pedigree, coupled with the confidence that their degrees would bear the IIT stamp, Kumar claimed.