The leg-up provided in the Union Budget for five third-generation Indian Institutes of Technologies (IITs), however, did not enthuse the IIT Palakkad campus here on Saturday. IIT Palakkad is among the five third-generation IITs started since 2014.
Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said that additional infrastructure would be created in the five IITs started after 2014 to facilitate education for 6,500 more students over the next five years. In effect, IIT Palakkad should have an additional 1,300 students in the next five years. At present, IIT Palakkad, which recently celebrated its 10th anniversary, has 1,400 students enrolled in five BTech programmes as well as postgraduate and research programmes.
Apart from IIT Palakkad, the other third-generation IITs are Tirupati, Bhilai, Jammu, Goa, and Dhanbad. However, according to officials, the student intake expansion offered by the Budget will not take place in IIT Goa, which does not have a permanent campus.
Usual suggestion
Officials on IIT Palakkad campus said that the expansion suggested in the Budget was usual. When IIT Palakkad started in 2015, it had 120 students. In 10 years, it has grown to accommodate 1,400 students.
However, the development of IIT Palakkad has suffered a jolt in the post-COVID-19 period as the construction of the buildings has not been completed. The first phase of development in IIT Palakkad was envisioned to have been completed by 2022. However, it is not yet fulfilled.
“Without proper infrastructure, we cannot surge ahead. We expect the barriers for infrastructure development to be removed soon,” said an official.
IIT Palakkad Director Seshadri Sekhar, however, could not be reached as he did not attend repeated calls from this paper.
Published – February 02, 2025 07:03 pm IST