July 6: Sanjiv Goenka, the chairman of the Rs 20,000-crore RP-Sanjiv Group, has been nominated as chairman of the board of governors (BoG) of IIT Kharagpur.
The Calcutta-based industrialist will steer the BoG, the highest administrative body of the centre of excellence, for three years.
This will be Goenka's third stint as chairman of the board. The previous two were between 2002 and 2007.
"IIT-KGP is a great institution and I'm very close to it because I have been deeply attached to it in the past and also because it is situated in Bengal. It is already a centre of excellence and it would be my endeavour to make the institute even better," Goenka said this afternoon.
The other members of board are Arundhati Bhattacharya, chairperson of the State Bank of India; Sudha N. Murty, chairperson of Infosys Foundation; professor N. Balakrishnan of IISc Bangalore; Jai Pal Mittal, MN Saha distinguished professor, NASI; P.P. Chakrabarti, director of the IIT; Pradip Pyne, registrar; and Dipanwita Roy Chowdhury and Manoj K. Tiwari, representatives of the institute's senate.
"We are delighted to have Shri Goenka back with us in the institute to chair the BoG again. We look forward to reaching greater heights under his guidance. He was chairman when I was appointed dean earlier. My initial discussion with him on his taking charge as chairman again has been extremely encouraging," director Chakrabarti said.
Goenka, who initiated 12 projects at the institute during his previous stints as chairman, said upgrading the infrastructure further would be one of his focus areas.
"Personally, I want more foreign students to study in IIT-KGP. It would be my endeavour to follow the roadmap set out by Union human resource development minister Prakash Javadekar," Goenka said.
The industrialist, promoter of power generator CESC and hypermart giant Spencer's among others, plans to engage more deeply with the board before charting out a strategy for the premier engineering institute of Bengal.
"Some of the facilities considered as luxury have now become necessity. We have to make them available to the students," Goenka added.
