Dhanbad: An overdose of nostalgia swept through the IIT(ISM)-Dhanbad campus on Sunday as nearly 200 former students, many of them senior executives in renowned organisations in the country and abroad, flocked to their alma mater to participate in Basant, the annual alumni meet.

Most of them spent the day going around familiar spots and playing badminton, even flying kites, with former batchmates, seniors and juniors in a bid to relive the golden days again.

"I have never seen such a beautiful campus anywhere else in India," quipped Anuradha Sinha, the wife of 1966 batch petroleum engineering alumnus Mihir Sinha.

The Sinhas flew in from New Jersey, USA, to participate in the event.

Mihir, a former JP Morgan employee and a City University of New York teacher said, "I have been attending Basant since the last ten years and I see a lot of positive changes both in academics as well as in physical infrastructure."

"The engineering branches have increased from four to 18 and the number of students has also increased from 600 to 6000," he said.

While interacting with The Telegraph Mihir further added, "We want our institute to be the number one in the country in terms of quality of education."

Similar sentiments were echoed by Bhavdip N. Vaidya, a 1983 batch BTech (petroleum engineering) alumnus and HARB Global Consultants managing director.

"We are happy that our alma mater has been upgraded into an IIT. We were the number 1 in terms of quality of teaching and we want the present administration to maintain the quality."

CCL director (technical) A.K. Mishra, who was accompanied by wife Punam Mishra, was seen playing badminton at the Diamond Hostel court with his former batchmates. "Alumni meets provide the rare opportunity to catch up with our batchmates," he said.

During the main programme on Sunday evening the IIT(ISM) Alumni Association will confer the Basant Samman on ONGC director (exploration) Ajay Kumar Dwivedi, Hindustan Zinc Limited director and CEO Sunil Duggal and former mining engineering faculty member V.K. Srivastava.

Mines safety director general P.K. Sarkar, Coal India Limited chairman Gopal Singh, former Central Mine Planning and Design Institute chairman A.K. Singh, government of Andhra Pradesh special commissioner Rajat Bhargava, National Geophysical Research Institute senior principal scientist Kalachand Sain and Mihir Sinha will also receive the distinguished alumni award during the function at the Lower Ground on the campus in the evening.