DEHRADUN: In what could be a major relief to the people of his home state, Union Human Resource Development (HRD) Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal 'Nishank' said on Tuesday that a permanent National Institute of Technology (NIT) campus will be set up in Sumari area in Uttarakhand's Pauri district.
Last year, around 600 students from the temporary NII campus in Srinagar town were shifted to the Jaipur NIT after they staged protests claiming that the area was highly accident-prone as three of their classmates had died in road mishaps.
"The students of NIT in Uttarkhand will now get a permanent campus," Pokhriyal said on Monday after meeting state Higher Education Minister Dhan Singh Rawat and Pauri MP Tirath Singh Rawat in New Delhi, an official spokesman said on Tuesday.
Dhan Singh said the foundation stone for the permanent campus will be laid in the first week of September.
The state government has already identified 200 acres of land in Sumari for building the new campus.
The new session of the NIT will commence in the temporary campus and a high-level committee will be formed to transfer the students from the Jaipur NIT campus.
"Sumari is the best place for NIT," Shan Singh said.
The students who have been shifted to Jaipur will be called back, he added.
For the next session, the admission process will start from the permanent campus, the Education Minister said.
Significantly, the Uttarakhand High Court in Nainital had earlier this month asked the state government to file an affidavit regarding the time frame for constructing the permanent NIT campus in Sumari. The high court took a serious of the shifting of students from Sumari to Jaipur.