New Delhi, 18 Dec: Infrastructure development on campus and faculty recruitment for second generation IITs was undertaken in a phased manner from 2012 but the pace was not commensurate with the increase in intake of students, a parliamentary panel has noted.
The Public Accounts Committee, chaired by Congress MP Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, in its report tabled in Lok Sabha on Monday, also questioned how the Ministry of Education (MoE) went for large-scale expansion of the IIT system without ensuring availability of requisite suitable land from state governments.
It observed that for construction of permanent campuses and providing planned facilities to students, transfer of suitable land by states was the primary requirement.
The report is based on a CAG audit in 2021 of the eight second generation IITs — Jodhpur, Mandi, Gandhinagar, Hyderabad, Indore, Bhubaneshwar, Ropar and Patna.
“The committee notes that though the infrastructure work like construction of academic buildings, hostels, laboratories etc, was undertaken in a phased manner in all IITs from 2012, the pace of their creation was not commensurate with the pace of envisaged increase of student/faculty,” the report said.
The delays were “significantly high in respect of five IITs (IIT Hyderabad up to 56 months, IIT Mandi up to 41 months, IIT Ropar up to 39 months, IIT Gandhinagar and IIT Indore up to 37 months)”, it said.
“The MoE submitted that when an IIT is to be established in a state, the ministry requests state governments to allocate 500-600 acres of land free of all encumbrances which then identify two or three sites as per availability for placing before a site selection committee comprising of senior officials from the ministry, representative from the concerned IIT, mentor IIT and CPWD that visit and inspect the sites and submits their recommendations for final selection,” the report said.
The ministry added that taking into account the issues in allotment and transfer of land in some of the IITs, in the future, efforts would be made to impress upon state Governments for identification of suitable land for transfer for setting up of an IIT, the report said.
“In view of unsuitable land offered by some of the state governments subsequently for creation of infrastructure of IITs, the committee is constrained to observe that proper due diligence was not conducted by the site selection committee,” it added.
The panel noted that the IITs have attributed the delay in construction of buildings to time taken for finalisation of designs, obtaining regulatory clearances, statutory approval, shortage of labour and remoteness of area.
It also said an audit observed that the IITs have been recruiting faculty consistently. However, the pace of recruitment of faculty did not correspond to the student intake or enrolment, resulting in vacancies in faculty positions, the committee said.
“This shortage was observed even to the end of March 2019 in all IITs except in IIT-Ropar. Faculty to student ratio was ranging between one to 16 in IIT Bhubaneswar and one to 11 in IITs Jodhpur and Mandi indicating the shortfall in the faculty positions in IITs except in IIT-Ropar,” the report said. The committee noted that faculty vacancies were ranging between five per cent to 36 per cent. (PTI)
“Regarding consideration of the availability of enough suitable faculty candidates before the setting up of new IITs, the ministry submitted that initially these eight IITs were proposed to start with student strength of 120, for which faculty strength of 30 was proposed that may increase in proportion to the student strength of these IITs,” the report said. (PTI)