Panel to Check Land Need for Higher Education Institutes Formed
NEW DELHI: In the wake of the difficulties encountered in acquiring land for setting up educational institutions, the Centre has constituted a Committee to recommend norms and criteria for determining the land requirement for Central higher educational institutions.
To be headed by former Secretary of Higher Education Satyanarayan Mohanty the panel– set up by the MHRD, which recognised the urgent need for revising the land requirement for different kinds of higher educational institutions that is more realistic and takes into account technological developments and allows for vertical expansion of the buildings– comprises Ex-Secretary in HRD Ministry M K Kaw; Director of College of Engineering, Pune, Anil Sahasrabudhe; Chairperson of Board of Governors, IIT, Roorkee, Ashok Gupta; Vice Chancellor, Central University of Gujarat, Syed Basi and Chairman of Board of Directors, ICICI Bank K V Kamath.
The Committee will study land utilisation by existing central higher educational institutions and also look at the International examples of land utilisation by higher educational institutions, especially in those cases where land is not easily available. It will recommend norms and criteria for determining land requirement in different locations of the country taking into account the topography and class of town or city. As per the extant of norms, the land requirement for higher education institutions varies from 100 acres for the IITs, 200 acres for theIIMs and the IISERs; 300 acres for the NITs and 500 acres for the IITs and Central Universities. The land is required to be contiguous and free from all encumbrances. According to the HRD Ministry, the existing guidelines had been laid down several years ago when there was surplus land available. However, with the burgeoning population and consequent expansion of cities, land has increasingly become a scarce commodity.The recent experience of the ministry has been that the requisite amount of land is not readily available and state governments have found it increasingly difficult to acquire land resulting in inordinate delay in setting up many Central higher educational institutions.