The committee on inspection of land for the proposed IIM in Ranchi last year. (Below) The site plan. File pictures

Ranchi, July 1: A central team is coming here on Friday to finalise the location of the proposed Indian Institute of Management (IIM) on a plot on the outskirts of the capital, though state officials admit the handover could lead to local protests.

The state’s higher education director, Anjani Kumar Shrivastava, said the plot measuring 214.29 acre was under Nagri mauza, 20km from the state capital. The proposed ring road, confirmed district administration sources, connecting Kathitand (Ranchi-Daltonganj road, NH-75) with NH-33 near Vikas Vidyalaya on Ranchi-Hazaribagh Road, would be skirting it, thereby ensuring easy access.

The Central team, from the Union ministry of human resource development (MHRD), would include additional secretary Ashok Thakur and financial adviser A.K. Roy, according to officials of the state human resource department.

Ministry officials, along with officials of IIM Calcutta, had come to Jharkhand in December last year and visited two sites — Baliapur in Dhanbad and Nagri in Ranchi. Ultimately, Nagri clinched it due to better air connectivity compared to the coal capital.

The Nagri plot was being handed over to the Centre for setting up the IIM free of cost.

But to ensure that courses could be started this year, the state human resource department was thinking of offering the National Games village in Hotwar as a temporary venue. But that would depend entirely on the long-delayed games, now scheduled to be held in Jharkhand in November.

This apart, the Nagri site, officials claim, wasn’t without encumbrances. The additional collector of Ranchi, Birsai Oraon, who is the custodian of government land, said though the land had been officially transferred to IIM, he was apprehensive of local protests as the authorities never cared to get proper possession of the acquired land.

“The land was in the name of Birsa Agriculture University (BAU). But university authorities and officials of the erstwhile government of Bihar never cared to complete the paperwork and get possession from private raiyats, who had been compensated at the time of acquisition in the ’50s,” he said.

Setting up Central institutions in Jharkhand is proving to be an uphill task. So far, initial work for the IIM, the Central University of Jharkhand and the National Law University has been started, but all the projects seem to have stuck the same roadblock: land.