G Thyagarajan and R Natrajan, chairman and a member of the high-powered committee, at Dhanbad. Picture by Gautam Dey

Dhanbad, June 8: G. Thyagarajan, the chairman of the high-powered committee now visiting Dhanbad, said today that there are strong grounds to recommend the merger of Central Fuel Research Institute (CFRI) and Central Mining Research Institute (CMRI) to consolidate the core competency of the two prestigious institutions.

The committee is expected to submit its recommendations to Union minister of science & technology Kapil Sibal by the end of this month. If the recommendation is accepted, he hoped, the merger would give a boost to research and development in the energy sector.

The recommendation or the decision to merge, however, is guided by considerations of streamlining scientific research and making our R & D compatible with global standards. The move, he said, had nothing to do with recent controversies of corruption surrounding the institutes but was in the interest of the scientific community.

Another purpose of the visit was to find out the urgency of shifting the CFRI out of its Jealgora campus as the underground fire has almost reached there.

Jharia Rehabilitation Authority, he said, had included the CFRI campus in its rehabilitation programme, while the BCCL has proposed to initiate an open cast project in the area. The committee will also meet officials of Tata Steel, CFRI?s neighbour, to find out, if the steel plant too is moving its headquarters to some other place.

Thyagarajan said a performance appraisal board in 2001 had expressed its concern at the under-utilisation of resources available at several CSIR laboratories. The CSIR had undertaken an exercise to network institutes having similar expertise to take up common projects and work together. Similarly, it had been decided to merge institutes situated in close proximity and with related competence.

The National Institute of Science & Communication and Institute of Publication and Information Communication were accordingly merged and renamed as National Institute of Science, Communication & Information. Thyagarajan said the merger will improved performance and felt that apprehension among a section of the scientists over the merger was misplaced.