New Delhi, May 25: The Centre today decided to award IIT status to Indian School of Mines (ISM) to honour the promise made by Narendra Modi in the run up to the general elections in 2014, capping years of intense campaigning by students, teachers and alumni of the Dhanbad cradle.
The Union Cabinet chaired by Modi also gave post facto approval to six new IITs, two of which, IIT Palakkad and IIT Tirupati, have already started functioning from last year.
The Cabinet also granted ex-post facto approval for establishing an NIT in Andhra Pradesh.
The four new IITs will start functioning from this year in Dharwar (Karnataka), Bhilai (Chhattisgarh), Goa and Jammu. They will offer 120 BTech seats each taking the total seats in 23 IITs to 10,500 this year against 10,000 seats offered in 19 IITs last year.
The decision to upgrade ISM has spelt both a bane and a boon for the 90-year-old institute. Chairperson D.D. Mishra said IIT status would prevent the institute to open an off-campus in Visakhapatnam, despite the Chandrababu Naidu government offering 300 acres of land for the purpose.
"There are IITs in every state. One IIT cannot set up a campus in a state which already has an IIT. ISM as a special type of institution could have opened the off-campus," Mishra told The Telegraph.
But several others at ISM said the IIT status would enhance their demand in the job market and upgrade pay packets at par with IIT students. Presently, an ordinary IIT graduate stands to get an annual package of Rs 12 lakh in campus placements, while an ISM graduate gets less than Rs 10 lakh.
"Employers say that if you get IIT status, the same package would be offered. Our students are meritorious but they lose out," said an official at ISM.
Today, the Union Cabinet gave the go-ahead for amending the Institutes of Technology Act 1961 for incorporating the new IITs and converting ISM to an IIT.
All these institutions would be considered institutions of national importance once covered under the Act.
Earlier, the HRD ministry had proposed to create a schedule under the Act and amend it by executive order for creation of the new IITs. But the law ministry did not agree. Hence, the Act will have to be amended.
The HRD ministry has identified sites for the six new IITs.
The results of the JEE-Advanced test will be out in June after which admissions will be conducted. The academic session is scheduled to begin from July 23.
In his budget speech last year, Union finance minister Arun Jaitley had announced the new IITs and the conversion of ISM to IIT. However, an expert panel, set up by the HRD ministry, was opposed to the conversion, subject to fulfilling a series of conditions.
The committee, headed by former IIT Bombay chairman Ashok Mishra, had initially given an adverse report in view of deficiencies. But it was again asked to suggest ways to upgrade the nearly 90-year-old ISM.
In its second report submitted last year, the panel highlighted several lacunae, particularly in the standards of faculty, in many branches and said that every faculty member at ISM should be evaluated by the same yardstick as that of established IITs.
Faculty members falling short of the yardsticks should be sent to institutions like IITs or IISc to be trained and younger faculty without PhD should be asked to complete their thesis from IITs, IISc or any reputed institutions abroad, the panel had said.
The committee said ISM was good for mining and petroleum engineering, earth science etc. However, departments like computer science, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering and chemical engineering weren't at par with IITs in terms of quality of faculty, research output, industry-linkage and international exposure.
HRD Ministry sources said that all the concerns of the panel would be addressed in a time-bound manner.
The institute had appointed 50 faculty members between 2004 and 2008 who were only MTech holders.
Mishra said only four to five faculty members were now without PhDs and that there was no plan to start any new course.
