The Centre has said that it has no proposal to set up more Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) in the country and is currently focused on improving the international rankings of the existing institutes.
The information was provided by Minister of State (MoS) for Education, Subhas Sarkar, in a written response to questions raised in the Rajya Sabha.
When asked whether the Centre has any plans to set up an IIT in each state of the country, Sarkar said in total, there are 23 IITs functioning in India at present.
However, as of now, there is no proposal to establish IITs in the remaining states, which includes names such as Mizoram, Meghalaya, Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Haryana, Punjab, Manipur, among others, he added.
In the Budget for the year 2014-15, the setting up of five new IITs in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Chhattisgarh, Jammu & Kashmir and Goa, was announced. Similarly, in the 2015-16 Budget, setting up of an IIT in Karnataka and upgradation of Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad into an IIT were announced.
The government had approved operationalisation of the six new IITs from their temporary campuses at a cost of Rs 1,411.80 crore and later, establishment of permanent campuses of these IITs under Phase-A at a total cost of Rs 7,002.42 crore subsuming the balance cost of the funds approved for temporary campuses.
New IIT Campus at Zanzibar
However, later this year, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) will open its first-ever overseas campus in Tanzania's Zanzibar.
The Zanzibar campus is slated to open in October 2023 with a batch of 50 undergraduate students and 20 master's students.
The new IIT campus will be set up in Zanzibar under the name IIT Madras at Zanzibar. It will be one of three campuses outside India, with the others located in Abu Dhabi and Kuala Lumpur.
The Zanzibar campus will also be the first to be led by a woman director, according to officials.
Preeti Aghalayam, an IIT-M alumna and a professor in its department of chemical engineering, has been appointed as the director-in-charge of the Zanzibar campus.
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)