Staff Reporter
ITANAGAR, Oct 29: The Ministry of Human Resource Development is reportedly putting a lot of pressure on officials of the National Institute of Technology (NIT) to shift to its permanent campus at Jote.
At present, the NIT is functioning from the Industrial Training Institute (ITI) building at Yupia and the students have been put up in rented hostels spread across Nirjuli, Doimukh and Lekhi.
According to sources, massive fund is required to pay rent, which is making the situation difficult for the NIT and MHRD.
“It costs around Rs 10 lakhs per month to pay rent for hostels and other buildings which we have taken on rent to run the NIT. This is huge money and the Ministry is not ready to pay more towards it, which is why they are putting a lot of pressure on us to shift to the Jote campus”, informed an official.
It was also informed that during the last meeting of the Board of Governor (BOG) of NIT, the Ministry passed a strong resolution and instructed them to shift students to the permanent campus.
“The MHRD has not released any fund for the last one year for NIT Jote. They have made it clear that unless we shift to the permanent campus no fund will be released. It was alleged in social media that Rs 800 crore has been spent for construction of infrastructure at Jote, which is absolutely wrong. It is on record that so far only Rs 250 crore has been released out of the promised Rs 800 crore”, the official added.
He went on to add, “Unfortunately lot of politics is being played over NIT. When the work started in 2012 the then Congress Government gave majority of petty contract work to its workers. However after BJP led NDA came to power at centre they started reducing the fund flow. Due to this bitter politics, the growth of NIT as an institute is suffering.”
Recently, NIT officials tried to shift 1st year students to the Jote campus but it backfired. The students refused to stay at the campus alleging that it does not have basic amenities and demanded that they be allowed to stay back at the temporary campus in Yupia.
They had launched protests for three days and pressurized NIT officials to accept their demands. The situation started to take an ugly turn and the officials of the Education Department and MHRD had to intervene.
“No doubt, Itanagar to Jote road is bad and needs urgent repairing. Infrastructure at Jote campus is also not ready but NIT officials have made some decent short term arrangements. It is obvious that the students will face some trouble in the initial period, but the story was same when RGU and NERIST started functioning for the first time. Students should shift to Jote campus and start a new chapter in the story of NIT Arunachal. If they refuse to shift, the Ministry will not sanction more funds and if this continues, NIT Arunachal will die a premature death”, said an official of the Department of Education.
