5 years on, IIT-Goa awaits allotment of land for permanent campus
Currently, the IIT-Goa offers four courses at the undergraduate level, three courses at the postgraduate level and PhD programmes in several disciplines.
New Delhi Five years since it was opened through a bill amendment, the Indian Institute of Technology in Goa (IIT-Goa), which functions from Farmagudi, is awaiting land allotment for the construction of a permanent campus, officials familiar with the developments said.
Between 2015-2016, six new IITs were established in Tirupati, Palakkad, Dharwad, Bhilai, Goa and Jammu through the Institutes of Technology (Amendment) Bill, 2016, to provide more opportunities to students who aspire to join the country’s premier engineering institutes. While the other five IITs have either already shifted to their permanent campuses or are in the process, IIT-Goa continues to share the campus with a state-run engineering college in Farmagudi.
The delay has not only affected the day-to-day functioning of the institution but also created uncertainty among faculty members and students, the officials cited above said.
“It has become a long wait for the institute now. The delay has created a sense of uncertainty among faculty members. In the last two years, we have seen that students with lower all-India ranking are opting for IIT-Goa. It was not the case initially,” director BK Mishra said.
Initially, officials said, the land was identified in Lolium part of south Goa in 2016 but the plan failed to materialise after residents protested against it.
Later in 2019, a land in Sanguem was identified but not finalised “in view of various difficulties encountered in procuring/acquiring and transferring the land to IIT-Goa”.
In 2020, a third site was identified in Shel-Melalui and Guleli villages. The state government, however, in January this year scrapped the project at the location following continuous protests, which turned violent on one occasion after villagers hurled stones and police responded with lathi-charge. The villagers claimed that their cultivation would be affected by the project.
Several faculty members told HT that the absence of a permanent campus was depriving the Goa unit of several opportunities.
“There are a number of research and funding schemes of the central government but for that, you need space to apply for it. Because we have no permanent campus, we are not getting any such project,” associate professor Sharad Sinha said.
“Besides, we are not able to get sponsored-research projects because to get such projects, one should have the necessary resources in terms of lab infrastructure to carry out the consultancy work. Some of these have visited us but when they visited our temporary campus, they did not offer anything,” Sinha added.
The faculty also said that due to limited space, the institute has not been able to introduce additional courses.
“We were thinking of starting programmes in civil engineering and materials engineering but they need large laboratories. We have set up just the most-needed labs in our curriculum in the space we borrowed from the college we are sharing the campus with.We are not being able to recruit people despite having enough faculty-sanctioned strength,” a faculty member said, preferring anonymity.
Currently, the institute offers four courses at the undergraduate level, three courses at the postgraduate level and PhD programmes in several disciplines.
“Due to limited space, the institute is not able to buy and install elaborate technical equipment. We are mostly working with tabletop equipment with limited capability just to hold demonstrations for our students,” the faculty member added.
Students at the institute also complained along similar lines. While IIT-Goa has built accommodation on the shared campus for undergraduate and postgraduate students, there is no residential space for PhD scholars.
“The PhD scholars in other IITs are given quarters to live with their family. But here I am, living with my 4-year-old daughter at a distance of 7-8 km. It’s not only affecting my research work but also becomes difficult to continue at the personal level since I had to pursue my family a lot to use this opportunity. Other IIT campuses have creches for kids but here, we don’t have that due to the paucity of space,” Prachi Kashikar, 31, a research scholar at the institute, said.
The faculty said it has sent multiple requests to the education ministry over the years and in July, a representative also visited the Prime Minister Office, in this regard. The institute hopes to get a land ahead of the new academic session scheduled to begin in November.
When contacted, a senior official at the ministry who did not wish to be named said, “We had been regularly sending reminders to the state government to expedite the process of allotting the land.”
Goa revenue secretary Sanjay Kumar, a member of a committee that was constituted by the state to allocate land for the project, said, “We are searching for suitable land for the project. We expect something to come up in the next few months.”