ROURKELA: In view of its growing campus strength, the National Institute of Technology-Rourkela (NIT-R) has initiated massive construction activities towards building infrastructure with the help of easy educational loan and corporate donations.
In 2023, the institute had signed an MoU with the Higher Education Financing Agency (HEFA) and secured loan support of Rs 165.81 crore under window-1 category. Subsequently, another MoU was signed towards securing Rs 33.16 crore loan from HEFA.
HEFA is a joint venture company of Canara Bank and Ministry of Education (MoE) to provide financial assistance for creation of capital assets including educational infrastructure and R&D facilities in India’s premier educational institutions.
Sources said on basis of its annual earning capacity and loan repayment capability, NIT-R came under the window-1 category in which it has to only return the principal loan amount to HEFA while the MoE would pay the interest.
NIT-R registrar Prof Rohan Dhiman said after obtaining necessary forest and urban local body clearances, work is going on in full swing on multiple infrastructure projects from March. Currently, a hostel block with a capacity to accommodate 1,000 boys, a 500-seat girls hostel and 72 faculty residences are being constructed. Similarly, work on a five million litre per day sewerage treatment plant would start soon.
The Central Public Works Department is implementing the HEFA projects through its contract firm. The registrar further informed that there are plans for construction of another 500-seat hostel block under economically weaker section ((EWS) category with funding from the MoE. Besides, another 500-seat hostel for girls with funding of Rs 42.69 crore from Mahanadi Coalfields Ltd (MCL) is on the anvil.
He said the student strength is around 8,000 and the institute presently has a total hostel capacity of 4,500. After completion of the ongoing projects, the total hostel strength would increase to 7,000.
Dhiman also informed that NIT-R will construct 72 residences for non-teaching staff at an estimated cost of Rs 35 crore from its own corpus. Construction work of a permanent building of Kendriya Vidyalaya (KV) on the institute’s campus would start soon at a cost of Rs 36 crore for which the Coal India Ltd (CIL) has already provided Rs 26 crore.
The strength of the campus community together with 8,000 students, 410 faculty members, 370 non-teaching staff and their family members is around 13,000. NIT-R receives annual financial grant of Rs 220-Rs 230 crore from the MoE and generates about Rs 45-Rs 50 crore from student fees.