Kapil Sibal slams Jairam Ramesh over his IIT remarks

Union human resource development minister Kapil Sibal today attacked environment minister Jairam Ramesh over his comments on IITs and IIMs not having world-class faculty.

Union HRD minister Kapil Sibal on Thursday attacked environment minister Jairam Ramesh over his comments on IITs and IIMs not having world-class faculty.

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Dismissing Ramesh's view that Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs), do not match upto the standards of other top class international institutes, Sibal said that there should be some logic behind Jairam's comments.

Sibal also said that IIT ranks 24th among top universities in the world.

The crux of the controversy can be traced to the remarks of Ramesh that only the students, and not the faculty, at IITs and IIMs were world class, which stirred a debate on the issue among academicians, political leaders and students.

He said that IITs and IIMs were surviving only because of their students and did not have world-class faculty.

The opposition BJP had earlier criticised Ramesh saying India can have such institutions only when it has "world-class ministers".

"We'll not have world class institutions till we have world class ministers," BJP spokesman Rajiv Pratap Rudy told reporters on Tuesday.

"The BJP would like to state categorically that we are proud of the IITs and the IIMs. All over the world, the presence of India is marked by IITs and IIMs," he had said.