IIT Kharagpur

History of the Indian Institutes of Technology begin with the report of a committee of industrialists, scientists, educationists and administrators, set up after the World War II, under the chairmanship of N.R. Sarkar.The committee included the Sir S.S. Bhatnagar,Sir J.C. Ghosh and Dharam Vira, ICS.In its report, submitted in 1946 The Committee suggested setting up of not less than four institutes for advanced learning .The first institute was set up near Kolkata. The West Bengal government donated 1200 acres of land at Hijli, Kharagpur.Unlike the other four IITs, Kharagpur has been set up indigenously with a small assistance from UNESCO.The Institute was born in May, 1950. It was then called the Eastern Higher Technical Institute and started functioning from Esplanade, Kolkata. The present name, Indian Institute of Technology,was adopted shortly before its inauguration on August 18,1951 at Kharag pur.The first session started with a batch of 224 students and 42 teachers.During the last three decades there has been massive development all over.Several new departments and centres have come up and the students number 3500. It was the first Indian Institute of Technology to start a School of Management and it was named after a distinguished alumni Vinod Gupta.Recently, the institute has established a new computer centre, which is perhaps the biggest in the country. The IIT also took lead in establishing campuses at two other locations — Salt Lake in Kolkata and Bhubaneshwar, to conduct diploma programmes in IT.The Alumni Association of Kharag -pur has been the very active. The Association conducts social and other programmes at regular intervals at several locations. The Bay Area Chapter seems to be the most active. Kgpites, as they are known, settled in the USA and Canada have set up the Indian Institute of Technology Foundation for enhancing the capability of IIT Kharagpur. It is a non-profit organisation and raises money to fund various academic and non-academic projects of the Institute.