New Delhi: The IIT Delhi senate has deferred a proposal to suspend a five-decade-old instrument technology course.

The highest academic body of the IIT on Wednesday decided that a national-level committee should first examine the merits of doing away with the course vis-a-vis its relevance.

The Instrument Design Development Centre runs courses such as MTech in instrument technology and masters in design. The instrument technology course deals with making tools required in areas such as health, medicine, defence, space and weather.

"The senate suggested more scrutiny of the proposal. A national-level panel of experts will be set up to study the issue," a senate member said.

The argument cited for scrapping the course was that there were only two permanent faculty members who could not manage the workload of MTech and research programmes.

Another reason was that several other departments were also dealing with instrument technology.

A dozen MTech and a similar number of PhD students currently study instrument technology.