Over 3,000 students and teachers of ISM-Dhanbad, who assembled at a massive pandal on the elite campus's lower grounds on Friday afternoon, spontaneously clapped when Union HRD minister Smriti Irani said the process to give the tech institute IIT status was "on the verge of completion".

Irani, who was the chief guest on the first day of the two-day ISM convocation, struck a chord with her audience as she did away with the protocol of reading out a prepared speech, instead speaking extempore for a good 15 minutes in English and Hindi with an easy affability.

"I was informed that a written speech of mine has been circulated here but I would slightly drift from protocol and talk to you from my heart," Irani said to loud applause. "Several students of ISM talk to me on Twitter and ask me about my promise (IIT status for ISM). I would like to give the message to them directly today," she said at the jam-packed pandal on ISM campus.

"The process for converting ISM into IIT is on the verge of completion," she said, referring to the longstanding demand of giving the country's premier mining college the status of an IIT.

"The IIT Council has deliberated on the issue and given us a definite plan and we have prepared a cabinet note on the issue in conjunction with different ministries," Union HRD minister added.

Aware that the Centre's massive fee hike proposed for all the IITs had come for flak from the students' fraternity across the country, Irani also chose to utilise the platform to highlight the fee waiver sop for poor SC/ST and physically challenged students.

Irani flew in by a chopper around 1pm, a three-hour delay from the schedule previously circulated by the ISM management owing to her commitments in Khunti and Ranchi earlier.

But, once she was there, her sporting, easy demeanour was enough to erase any impatience among her waiting audience of alumni, students and faculty members.

Irani conferred awards to distinguished ISM alumni of batches 2014 and 2015 as well as chosen faculty members for their exemplary performance.

She also inaugurated a six-storey academic complex on the ISM campus said to be worth Rs 93 crore.

Appealing to ISM students and teachers to make teaching science socially useful, she said: "It is a pity the science can enrich plutonium but it is not enriching our heart."

But Irani's assurance on the ISM's long-pending IIT status was perhaps her best convocation gift.

Though Irani did not mention any date for the IIT status, the minister's magic words "on the verge of completion" did the trick.

Madhuri Suthar, the 2014 topper in electronics and communication engineering, summed up the mood: "Great convocation turned greater when we heard the Union HRD minister's assurance to upgrade our alma mater."

A long-pending demand, the issue of ISM getting an IIT status had lately seemed to be put on the backburner, a far cry from Narendra Modi's Lok Sabha election rally in Putki on April 15, 2014, when he had strongly supported the demand for the tech cradle set up in the mineral-rich region way back in 1926.

On November 11, 2014, Irani, then already the Union HRD minister, had reiterated ISM would get IIT status while campaigning for the BJP in an Assembly poll rally at BSK College, Nirsa. A visiting ISM student delegation had asked her about it.

The following year, in his Union Budget speech on February 28, 2015, Union finance minister Arun Jaitley announced IIT status for ISM.

But subsequently, a panel headed by a former IIT Mumbai director, which had been asked to look into the issue, pointed out certain lacunae in the qualification of some teachers and set a number of conditions for ISM, delaying the process.

Unsure about its status, ISM didn't organise its convocation in 2015. Finally it decided to hold the convocation in 2016, awarding 2,902 degrees to alumni of 2014 and 2015 over April 8-9, Friday and Saturday.

Earlier presenting a report before the audience, ISM director Durga Charan Panigrahi spoke on the institute's infrastructure and work, including technologies developed and implemented, international collaborations, the MoUs the institute had signed for academic and research collaboration, foreign students on its rolls, among others.

ISM chairman D.D. Mishra, on his part, stressed on the ethics of sustainability, social equity, economic welfare and ecological health.

When will ISM-Dhanbad get the status of an IIT? Tell ttkhand@abpmail.com