IIT-Patna faculty member AK Thakur speaks at the debate during foundation day celebrations of the institute on Tuesday. Picture by Jai Prakash

The future dictated the fifth foundation day show of Indian Institute of Technology on Tuesday.

Its upcoming campus at Bihta hogged the limelight at the event. Tuesday’s show was perhaps the last one to be celebrated at its existing Patliputra Industrial Area address.

Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Patna, registrar Subhash Pandey said: “By June 2014, we are likely to shift to the new campus at Bihta. Once there, more courses would be started. We would have a student strength of around 5,000.”

The tech cradle’s present student strength is around 700 in five BTech and three MTech programmes and a PhD programme.

A series of programmes, including a foundation day debate, “Innovation and entrepreneurship: Should we start from the first year”, marked the event. The budding techies of IIT exhibited their oratory skills in the verbal duel in which nobody was declared a winner.

The team speaking for the motion included Sanjay Mishra, a guest faculty from the University of Kansas, US, and third-year electrical engineering student Chaitanya Kansal. Faculty member A.K. Thakur and Aakash Tripathi, another student, spoke against the motion.

Making a point for entrepreneurship, Kansal said: “The institute should start entrepreneurship courses from the first year to acquaint students with entrepreneurship right from day one.” He highlighted the various schemes and projects funded by the Union government and other international agencies for promoting entrepreneurs and innovative ideas.

Opposing him, Aakash Tripathi said the course would be a burden on students if it were introduced in the first year. It should be offered only to third-year or fourth-year students.

The institute has recently introduced a entrepreneurship course for third-year students.

Uday Shankar, a third-year electrical engineering student, said: “Our institute has moved far ahead of others in the past five years. Our two previous batches have got good placements. Several others are pursuing higher studies in foreign universities.”

Apart from the debate, Nebula 13, a cultural extravaganza, was organised by the IITians. Its high points were a fashion show and a musical show, Fusion. A blood donation camp was also organised.