Parliamentary panel pulls up Modi govt, asks why DU, JNU get less money than IITs, IIMs

The panel’s assessment is backed by HRD ministry data, which states over 50% of govt funds for higher education went to 3% of students between 2016 & 2018.

IIT Bombay campus | Twitter

New Delhi: A parliamentary standing committee has pulled up the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development for allocating less money for central universities than it does for IITs, IIMs etc.

In a report submitted in the Rajya Sabha last week, the standing committee for human resource development said central universities had more students than technical and management institutes and, so, should be funded accordingly.

“The committee notes that the allocation for central universities is inadequate as compared to their infrastructure, faculty and number of students enrolled,” the committee, led by BJP MP Satyanarayan Jatiya, stated in the report.

“The committee further notes that central universities have a larger number of students enrolled in them as compared to technical and management institutes,” it added. “Therefore, the department should make efforts for increase in the funding for the central universities at appropriate level.” 

Central universities would include institutions such as Delhi University, Jawaharlal Nehru University and University of Hyderabad, while IITs and IIMs are classified as centrally funded technical institutes (CFTIs).

Over 50% of funds for 3% of students

The committee’s assessment is backed by the HRD ministry’s own data. In 2018, the ministry stated in Parliament that more than 50 per cent of the government’s funds for higher education, between 2016 and 2018, went to just 3 per cent of the country’s students — those who study at premier institutes like the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) and the National Institutes of Technology (NITs). 

According to the ministry’s data, 26.96 per cent of the funds went to the IITs, which have just 1.18 per cent of the students, while 17.99 per cent went to NITs, which account for 1.37 per cent of all students.

The IIMs, which have 0.12 per cent of the students, got 3.35 per cent of the funds. Around 2.28 per cent of the budget went to the Indian Institutes of Information Technology (IIIT), where 0.05 per cent of higher-education students study. 

The remaining 49 per cent of the higher education funds were given to 865 institutions that account for over 97 per cent of the country’s students.

The parliamentary standing committee states in its report that the trend of low allocations for central universities “is certainly affecting the implementation of various schemes in the ministry”.

To address the situation, the committee recommended that the department of higher education, which falls under the HRD ministry, reconsider/review its overall mechanism, right from the stage of presenting proposals until the final expenditure is incurred. “It should also assess the impact thereof insofar as the implementation of various schemes is concerned,” the committee added.

The committee also noted that the funds for IITs had increased by 13 per cent between the 2019-20 budget (revised estimates) and the 2020-21 budget, while the allocation for central universities had come down. 

The revised estimates for IITs in 2019-20 stood at Rs 6,329.95 crore, while the allocation was Rs 7,182 crore in 2020-21. For central universities, according to the report, the revised budget in 2019-20 was Rs 7,984.90 crore, which was reduced by 6 per cent to Rs 7,477.26 crore in 2020-21.

Support for other technical institutions like the NITs and Indian Institute of Engineering Science And Technology (IIEST) has also been increased 9.5 per cent, from Rs 3,547.05 crore in 2019-20 to Rs 3,885 crore in 2020-21.