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IIT-Delhi asked to explore possibility of UAE campus
The Centre has requested the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi to explore the possibility of setting up a campus in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the education ministry said in the Lok Sabha on Monday
The Centre has requested the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi to explore the possibility of setting up a campus in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the education ministry said in the Lok Sabha on Monday.
The Centre’s request came after a trade deal was signed between India and the UAE during a virtual summit, attended by the leaders of the two countries in February this year, Union minister of state for education, Subhas Sarkar, said in a written response to a question by Congress MP MK Raghavan.
Sarkar’s response quoted a joint India-UAE ‘Vision Statement’ issued on February 18, 2022, that said, “...the leaders agreed to establish an Indian Institute of Technology [campus] in the United Arab Emirates.”
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“As a follow up to this, the government has requested the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi to explore the possibility of establishing a campus of IIT Delhi in the UAE,” Sarkar said.
In 2021, IIT-Delhi had submitted a proposal to the ministry for opening campuses in Saudi Arabia and Egypt following which, a 16-member committee headed by the IIT council’s chairman of standing committee, K Radhakrishnan, was constituted to prepare a framework for Indian universities to set up campuses abroad.
HT had last week reported that the committee has submitted its preliminary report pitching top IITs to take a lead on this front.
According to the ministry’s response in Parliament on Monday, IIT-Delhi has already reached out to the Indian Ambassador to UAE to identify and arrange a meeting with the UAE authorities. “The Department of Education and Knowledge, Abu Dhabi (ADEK) was identified as the relevant UAE authority. In the first ADEK-IITD meeting, both sides made presentations about their respective organizations and conveyed their eagerness and enthusiasm to move forward with this project,” the ministry said.
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“In the second ADEK-IITD meeting, ADEK invited representatives from the Department of Economic Development and from the Advanced Technology Research Council who made presentations on the economic vision and the research priorities of Abu Dhabi respectively. On a request from ADEK, IIT Delhi made a presentation on the model followed for mentoring new IITs by the older IITs and shared its experiences in mentoring IIT Ropar and IIT Jammu,” the ministry added.
