Mukherjee, Singh: Power push

New Delhi, June 21: Foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee has asked the human resource development ministry to upgrade a Birbhum-based private aided engineering college to an IIT.

Mukherjee is a member of the board of governors of the eight-year-old Birbhum Institute of Engineering and Technology (BIET) in Suri, which also has Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee as its president. Some HRD officials are wondering whether the institute is trying to use its “star power” to win itself an IIT tag.

But the chairman of the BIET board of governors has said the institute is seeking IIT status purely on merit. No private engineering college has ever been made an IIT.

“We believe BIET has the credentials to be upgraded to IIT status,” professor Ramaranjan Mukherjee, the chairman of the institute’s board of governors, said, adding that the current administration of the BIET was ready to hand over the reins of the institute to the Centre.

The institute is run by a society — the Indian Centre for Advancement of Research and Education, Birbhum — registered in 1999. Pranab Mukherjee, Chatterjee and Ramaranjan Mukherjee are founding members of the society.

In a letter dated June 3, 2008 — a day before he left for China on an official visit — the foreign minister asked HRD minister Arjun Singh to consider the Birbhum institute for conversion into an IIT. The letter — a copy is with The Telegraph — bore the stamp of Pranab Mukherjee’s office of minister of external affairs.

Citing the HRD ministry’s plans to start new IITs during the 11th Five Year Plan, the minister wrote that the institute was equipped to handle the tag of one of India’s biggest education brands.

Although the foreign minister’s Lok Sabha constituency Jangipur is in Murshidabad district, he was born in Mirati village, Birbhum. Chatterjee is a Lok Sabha MP from Bolpur in Birbhum.

“Without going into the merits of the case, the fact that the institute is using the minister’s name suggests an attempt to use the star power it has at its disposal,” a senior HRD ministry official said.

Institute sources said an earlier request from Ramaranjan Mukherjee to the HRD ministry went unheeded.

The HRD ministry had announced plans to start eight new IITs, in addition to the existing seven, by 2012. Locations for the new IITs have been earmarked — Bengal is not listed as a recipient.

At the time the Centre was deciding on the states for the new IITs, Bengal was told it would not receive another IIT as it already had one in Kharagpur. But that argument no longer holds, with the HRD ministry planning to upgrade Banaras Hindu University’s IT wing (BHU-IT) to an IIT, giving Uttar Pradesh its second IIT after Kanpur.

“We have a large campus and adequate infrastructure for an IIT. We also have a very good placement record. Among all of West Bengal’s private engineering colleges, we rank second,” Ramaranjan Mukherjee said over phone.

Arjun, while drafting a response to a demand from President Pratibha Patil for an all-girls’ IIT, had indicated that he was not averse to starting more IITs than just the eight announced.

The Birbhum institute, on its website, says it receives funding from the Bengal government, the Birbhum zilla parishad, the state power development corporation and from the MP local area development scheme.