New Delhi, June 8: The Centre will tomorrow try to obtain financial clearance for as many as 390 institutes — all in a single day in a race to showcase quick results in higher education.

Officials said they could not recall any instance in the recent past when so many key projects had been scrutinised financially at one go.

Besides the new IIMs, proposals for 10 new national institutes of technology (NITs) and 374 model colleges are expected to be taken up.

The expenditure finance committee (EFC) of the government is scheduled to evaluate and possibly clear the financial requirements for all these projects, critical to the UPA’s higher education expansion drive, The Telegraph has learnt.

If cleared, these projects can be taken up by the cabinet for its approval, following which the institutions can be launched.

The promised new IIMs, NITs and model colleges comprise the entire range of the UPA’s higher education assurances that are conceptually ready for implementation and can be processed for financial clearance crucial for the cabinet’s approval.

No outline has been finalised yet for 14 new “world-class universities” and 20 Indian Institutes of Information Technology — the remaining components of the expansion blueprint.

HRD ministry sources confirmed that the hurry to obtain financial clearance for the IIMs, NITs and colleges is a result of the government’s rush to show “tangible” results soon.

“It is very clear that this surprising move to seek clearance for all these institutions at one go is the outcome of the desire to be able to tell the country that concrete progress has been made in education... soon after returning to power,” a senior HRD ministry official said.

But EFC clearance need not mean that the approved institutes will necessarily start offering courses this year, the sources cautioned, though it will increase the chances of the launch of the IIMs and the NITs.

“The government will, however, be in a position to claim that they have made progress in launching the new institutes,” a source said.

The draft notes for the EFC meet also reveal that Rajasthan, which earned an IIM courtesy an error in finance minister Pranab Mukherjee’s interim budget speech earlier this year, will have to wait for its prize.

The six IIMs to be considered for financial clearance tomorrow will be based in Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Uttarakhand, Jammu and Kashmir, Tamil Nadu and Haryana — states origi- nally promised the premier B-schools.

The blueprint for the Rajasthan IIM will be drawn up separately later, the sources said.

Mukherjee’s interim budget speech had incorrectly mentioned Rajasthan as one of the states promised IIMs, and ahead of the elections, the government had little option but to include the state as an additional beneficiary.

Six of the new NITs will come up in the Northeast.

The 374 model colleges will come up one in each educationally backward district of the country — defined as districts where school enrolment rates are poorer than the national average.