Seemandhra: Plans to setup IITs, IIMs, may fail due to land unavailability
Hyderabad: Setting up of 11 national-level premier institutes in AP is easier said than done. Though AP Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu has broadly finalised the locations of these institutes by dividing Seemandhra into three circuits, non-availability of government-owned land has emerged as the biggest challenge for officials.
Revenue officials said each institute requires a minimum of 200 acre with institutes like the agriculture university needing 500 acre, but so much of government land is not available at any single place.
Even the district collectors of Krishna, Guntur, Visakhapatnam and Chittoor among others, in their preliminary surveys, have found that private and forest lands will be needed in addition to government lands to set up these institutes.
“It is not an easy task to acquire private and forest land. Environmental clearances are needed from the Union environment and forest ministry. The state government has to first acquire private land as institutes like AIIMs, IIT and IIM need at least 200 acres each,” said a senior official searching for sites to set up these national level institutes.
AP education minister G. Srinivasa Rao, has asked officials to try to ensure that 1,000 acre is earmarked for institutes like IIT, IIM and AIIMS. “The IITs, IIMs and AIIMS are premier institutes and have a brand value of their own. AP government should not act in haste in setting up these institutes in temporary locations with shortage of labs and teaching faculty. Also, AP should search for more land and set up these institutes on not less than 500 acre land each,” said a retired IIT faculty member.
The cost of setting up an IIT is around Rs 1800 crore and an IIM Rs 1,100 crore. At present there are 16 IITs in 15 states (two in Uttar Pradesh — IIT-Kanpur and IIT-Varanasi). Of the new IITs that came up in 2009 – in Patna, Mandi, Jodhpur, Bhubaneshwar, Ropar, Hyderabad, Indore and Gandhinagar – only IIT-Mandi has its own campus while the rest are still using temporary campuses.
Also, lack of faculty is a major challenge. As against 6,591 existing faculty positions in the 15 IITs, only 4,079 faculty positions are filled. The 11 institutes given to AP State post bifurcation by the centre are: All India Institute of Medical Sciences, National Institute of Technology, Agricultural University, National Institute of Disaster Management, all to be set up in Krishna-Guntur circuit.
Indian Institute of Management, International Institute of Information Technology, Tribal University, Petroleum University - in Visakhapatnam circuit. Indian Institute of Technology, Central University, and Indian Institute of Science and educational Research - in Tirupati circuit.
