Bhubaneswar, Aug. 1: The state government today announced that the proposed Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) would be set up near Berhampur in Ganjam district.

The IISER is a group of premier science education and research institutes in India, which has been declared as "institutions of national importance" by an act.

In February, presenting this year's budget in Parliament, Union finance minister Arun Jaitley had announced that two IISERs would be established in Odisha and Nagaland. Once commissioned, Odisha will join the group of the elite institutes already set up in Bhopal, Calcutta, Mohali, Pune, Thiruvanthapuram and Tirupati.

The announcement that the institute would be located near Berhampur came when the state government was facing resentment for recommending the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) in Sambalpur and according priority to Rourkela over cities such as Cuttack and Berhampur for the smart city tag.

The BJD has a high political stake in south Odisha, especially in Ganjam, chief minister Naveen Patnaik's home turf, which had given all its 13 Assembly seats to the ruling party in the last elections. The party also won all the Lok Sabha seats from the region.

Justifying the location, technical education minister Sanjay Das Burma said: "Berhampur satisfies the specifications related to infrastructure, including air, railway and road connectivity, made by the Centre."

"The state government will provide 200 acres free of cost to set up the institute and is also committed to provide the transit campus in Berhampur and a nearby area," he said, adding that admission to the proposed institute would start from the 2016-17 academic session. The institute would operate from the transit campus for three years till the permanent campus is ready.

The fully residential institute will carry out research in frontier areas of science and provide science education at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels, sources said.

However, the minister was not clear about the intake capacity of the institute and its admission criteria.

Technical education secretary Asit Tripathy will co-ordinate with the Union human resources development ministry for its establishment. Besides, a high-level panel, headed by the chief secretary, has been formed to expedite the process, said the minister.

Berhampur residents today celebrated the announcement by bursting crackers, distributing sweets and dancing to drumbeats.

Additional reporting by Sunil Patnaik in Berhampur