Four new IITs and six IIMs

Government has decided to establish four new IITs and six IIMs in various states besides upgrading some of the state universities to the status of Central Universities.While the new IITs would be located in Orissa, Madhya Pradesh (Indore), Gujarat and Punjab, the IIMs would come up in Tamil Nadu, Jammu and Kashmir, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh (Raipur), Uttarakhand and Haryana.These new institutions would be part of the eight IITs and seven IIMs proposed to be set up during the 11th Five Year Plan. Government has already announced establishment of four IITs in Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, Bihar and Himachal Pradesh and one IIM at Shillong.In addition, he said the government proposed to convert the Institute of Technology of the Banaras Hindu University into an IIT. Admission to this Institute was already based on the IIT-Joint Entrance Examination.The 14 Central Universities aiming at world class standards would be located in Pune, Kolkata, Coimbatore, Mysore, Visakhapatnam, Gandhinagar, Jaipur, Patna, Bhopal, Kochi, Amritsar, Bhubaneswar, Greater NOIDA and Guwahati.Finance Minister P. Chidambaram in his annual budget last month announced an allocation of Rs.344 billion for the education sector - an increase by 20 percent over the previous budget.In three states, existing state universities would be taken over by the Central government and converted into Central Universities. They are Dr Hari Singh Gaur University at Sagar in Madhya Pradesh, Guru Ghasidas University at Bilaspur in Chhattisgarh and Goa University.