ROURKELA: Even as the National Institute of Technology - Rourkela (NIT-R) is ready with a plan to set up a Kendriya Vidyalaya (KV) on its campus in project mode, a section of the campus community is averse to the idea of spending the institute’s financial resources for running the school.
They argued that the financial resource of the institute should be utilised for its growth and further advancing the core activities of technical education. Sources said the Board of Governors (BOG) of the NIT-R has recently approved the KV proposal and the administration is all set for its implementation.
The opposing party pointed out that since KV will be run on a project mode, the NIT-R has to bear all the expenses from its internal resource generation (IRG) fund which primarily comes from the students’ fees as it cannot use the annual Central government grant.They said the operation and recurring expenditures for the KV are estimated to be Rs 3 crore annually while the total annual budget for 20 departments of the NIT-R is around Rs 2 crore.
While almost all departments of NIT-R are starving for money to meet operating expenses for proper running and upkeep of UG/PG/PhD labs and equipment repair among others, many departments do not even have their own buildings. “At this juncture, it is unwise to start the KV on project mode when there are at least 30 schools within one to 11-km-radius of the institution,” they opined.
Meanwhile, NIT-R registrar Rohan Dhiman said the decision to set up the KV was made after some non-teaching staff complained that their wards weren’t getting admission in the nearby two KVs while private English medium schools are expensive. “Once the KV starts working, it would benefit children of both teaching and non-teaching staff and students of NIT’s neighbourhood,” he said.
The registrar further informed that the NIT-R has secured loan of Rs 165.81 crore for infrastructure development. Meanwhile sanctioned posts for teaching and non-teaching staff are 485 and 540 respectively.While the school is most likely to be inaugurated by Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on November 30, the Coal India Ltd (CIL) has sanctioned Rs 40 crore for infrastructure development.
