Bhubaneswar, June 18: Officials of the Union human resource development (HRD) ministry will visit Sambalpur on June 25 to inspect the location of the proposed IIM in Odisha.

However, sources indicated that the admission for the B-school was unlikely to take place for the current 2015-16 academic session.

A letter from the HRD ministry to the technical education department stated that the committee would visit the proposed sites to "ascertain the suitability of the locations and give recommendations to the ministry at the earliest".

The committee, headed by the ministry's joint secretary Praveen Kumar, will consist of IIM-Indore director Rishikesha Krishnan, state technical education secretary Asit Tripathy and chief engineer of the central public works department Umesh Mishra.

The panel will give its recommendations on the location of the temporary campus from the sites suggested by the state government.

IIM-Indore, the mentor institute for the business school in Odisha, had informed the ministry that if the site for the campus was not selected by June 15, it would not be able to hold admissions for the current academic session. A senior state government official, on condition of anonymity, said: "It's highly unlikely that the B-school will start from this year."

In Sambalpur, the state government has identified a piece of government land located at Brahmanipali in Rengali block, another site at Basantpur near Burla and the third one at Kutrajori in Jujumera block for the permanent campus.

The three sites for the temporary campus of the institute are the Sambalpur University Institute of Information Technology, Silicon Institute of Technology and Government Polytechnic at Rengali.

"The suggested sites should have proper physical and social infrastructure, including good road, rail and air connectivity," the ministry's letter stated.

In January last, the state government had suggested Gothapatna in Bhubaneswar as the permanent campus and the IIIT complex as the temporary campus. However, after HRD minister Smriti Irani had written a letter to chief minister Naveen Patnaik seeking his views on Sambalpur as the location, the state government changed its position.

The state's technical education minister Sanjay Das Burma said: "I am still extremely hopeful that the central team will identify the site for the temporary campus and the admissions will start from this year."

In a related development, members of the Paschimanchal Peoples' Forum today staged a dharna over establishment of the IIM in Sambalpur.