E-Paper
HRD ministry starts process for eminence tag to 12 institutions; Jadavpur, Anna varsities will have to wait
According to the official, out of the 14 new institutions that were selected by the University Grants Commission (UGC) on the recommendation of an expert panel, the process has been initiated for 12.
The Union human resource development ministry on Wednesday set the ball rolling to issue the coveted Institute of Eminence tag to 12 varsities including Delhi University, IIT Madras and Banaras Hindu University (BHU), a senior official said.
The Institute of Eminence programme is an ambitious plan of the Narendra Modi government, which aims to catapult Indian educational institutions into the top positions in global rankings.
According to the official, out of the 14 new institutions that were selected by the University Grants Commission (UGC) on the recommendation of an expert panel, the process has been initiated for 12.
A university that the Satya Bharti Foundation plans to build in Delhi, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham (Bengaluru), VIT (Vellore), Jamia Hamdard (New Delhi), Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology (Bhubaneswar), OP Jindal University (Sonepat) and Shiv Nadar University (Greater Noida) in the private category; and BHU, IIT Madras, IIT Kharagpur, Delhi University and the University of Hyderabad are on the list, the official said.
The selected institutions will have to set targets like maintaining a student-teacher ratio or those related to infrastructure for them to achieve the IoE tag which only the best institutions in India will get, the official added.
Letters of Intent (LoIs) have been sent to the private institutions and the public ones have been asked to sign memorandums of understanding (MoUs) so that the status can be conferred on them, the official said.
However, the process to grant the status was not initiated for Anna University and Jadavpur University. They were also recommended by UGC but with a caveat—they can be considered only after the respective state governments agree to share up to 50% of the maximum of ₹1000 crore each that they will receive over five years.
“The letters from state governments of West Bengal and Tamil Nadu are awaited in the case of Jadavpur and Anna Universities,” a senior HRD ministry official said.
In case of Shiv Nadar and OP Jindal Universities, letters have been written to state governments to take steps to ensure that they are converted to deemed varsities.
Reliance Foundation’s proposed Jio Institute, BITS Pilani, Manipal Academy of Higher Education in the private category, and the Indian Institute of Science, IIT Delhi, and IIT Bombay have been already issued similar letters.
There will be no financial support for private institutions proposed as Institutions of Eminence, but they will be entitled to more autonomy as a special category of a so-called deemed university. For public institutions, apart from autonomy additional funds will be provided.
The greenfield institutions will get a three-year period to establish and operationalise the institution, and thereafter, EEC will consider giving IoE status to them.
