New Delhi, Dec. 21: The whim that led Indian politicians to rename some of the country’s biggest cities may finally have caught the IITs in its grip.

India is planning to rename IIT Bombay and IIT Madras half a century after they were started, under amendments to the Indian Institute of Technology Act proposed by the UPA government.

If the amendments are approved by Parliament in their present state, the institutes will soon be called IIT Mumbai and IIT Chennai.

The amendments suggested by the human resource development ministry are principally aimed at recognising degrees of eight new IITs that the government has announced. But The Telegraph has learnt that the draft IIT (Amendment) Act, 2008, also proposes changing the names of IIT Bombay and IIT Madras, 12 years after the two port cities were renamed Mumbai and Chennai.

The loudest calls for renaming IIT Bombay, the second of the premier engineering schools to be set up in 1958, have come from the Shiv Sena, a member of the Opposition NDA.

Earlier this year, the Sena launched a campaign calling for renaming IIT Bombay. The campaign found few takers from the general public, though. It was under the rule of the Sena in Maharashtra that Bombay was changed to Mumbai.

Along with Bombay High Court and the Bombay Stock Exchange, IIT Bombay is among the last few iconic institutions retaining the city’s old name.

“These amendments would mean the end of the road for IIT Bombay and IIT Madras. The amendments seek to change the names in keeping with today’s names for the cities,” a senior government official said.

Renaming the institutes will help eliminate “confusion” surrounding the names of the engineering schools, the official said.

But alumni of the elite institutions are divided in their response to the proposed name changes that some argue will add to the confusion internationally, among educational institutions and companies that have worked with the IITs.

“Multinational companies used to working with IIT Bombay and IIT Madras and recruiting from these institutions will have to adjust to a new name,” Ramesh Gupta, a chemical engineering graduate from the 1998 batch of IIT Madras, said.

IIT Madras was set up in 1959.

Saroj Dutta of the 2004 batch from IIT Bombay said he fears any renaming may also hurt the brand value of the IITs.

The two IITs will also need to alter agreements with educational institutions and companies to reflect new names, a senior administrator from IIT Madras said.

But Ashok Kalbag, secretary general of the Pan IIT alumni association, warned against “chasing windmills like those revolving around name changes”.

'IIT alumni must involve themselves in issues of larger national interest. Politicians will try and create distractions,” said the Mumbai-based 1974 batch mechanical engineering graduate. “Sentimentally, I would not want the name to be changed. But it is perhaps inevitable.”

Raj Varadarajan, IIT Madras alumnus now in his sixties, also said students need not worry about the brand value of the institutes suffering because of a change in names. “The value comes from the IIT brand. And that remains unaffected,” said Varadarajan, also a member of the Pan IIT alumni association.