Govt-appointed panel recommends 19 more educational institutions. HRD ministry to take final call early next week.
New Delhi: Nineteen educational institutions, including one backed by former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan, are in the running for the Institute of Eminence (IoE) tag.
The institutions — which include seven public and 12 private colleges — have been recommended for the eminence status by an empowered committee headed by former chief election commissioner N. Gopalaswami. The panel’s second list has been submitted to the Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry.
The second list includes prominent institutes such as Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), the Banaras Hindu University (BHU) and Panjab University (PU) but does not include a single IIT. It also includes private players such as Ashoka University and O.P Jindal University.
The Modi government’s efforts at creating this new class of universities had stoked controversy in July when the government awarded the coveted tag to Reliance Foundation’s Jio Institute, which is yet to be built.
Jio Institute was awarded the eminence status along with IIT-Bombay, IIT-Delhi, IISc Bangalore, and private players BITS Pilani and Manipal University.
The government had then overlooked the claims of institutions such as IIT Madras, IIT Kharagpur, Delhi University, Jadavpur University and Anna University.
These universities, however, are now back in the running for the IOE tag. In all, 30 institutions, including 11 that missed out from the first list, will be considered for the coveted IoE tag.
Also read: ‘Eminent’ Jio Institute to get off the ground in early 2019
More institutes under Greenfield category
KREA University, backed by Raghuram Rajan, is one of three institutions that have been recommended in the controversial Greenfield category, for yet to be built institutions, under which Reliance bagged the tag.
The other institutes in this category are Satya Bharti University by the Satya Bharti Foundation and the Indian Institute for Human Settlements, Bengaluru.
KREA University has started its admission process for the 2019 session.
Apart from the IITs, the other prominent institution to miss out is Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), which was missing from the previous recommendation as well.
The public institutions that the committee has recommended include Tezpur University, Assam; Savithribai Phule Pune University, Maharashtra; the University of Hyderabad, Andhra University apart from AMU, PU and BHU.
Among private institutions, the committee has recommended the names of Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Coimbatore; VIT, Vellore; Jamia Hamdard University, New Delhi; Shiv Nadar University, Noida; Azim Premji University, Bengaluru; Ashoka University, Sonepat; Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology, Bhubaneshwar; O.P. Jindal Global University, Haryana, and the Institute of Public Health Sciences, Telangana.
Also read: Files of 4 institutes that were competing with Jio for ‘eminence’ tag go missing from UGC
Decision early next week
The government will eventually select more institutions to go with the six it has already awarded the tag.
While the government planned 20 IoEs, the empowered panel has now recommended that it take the number to 30 institutes.
The ministry is expected to declare the names of selected institutes, and if it will abide with the recommendations, by next week after a scheduled meeting between the empowered committee and the University Grants Commission (UGC).
These selected institutions are to be promoted as India’s topmost institutions. While the public institutions will receive Rs 1,000 crore in funding from the government over a period of five years, the private institutions will get complete autonomy from the regulators.
The government hopes that these measures will catapult these institutions up prominent world educational rankings.