ROURKELA: As part of its ongoing infrastructure push, the National Institute of Technology-Rourkela (NIT-R) is moving ahead with multiple projects worth around Rs 503 crore to cater to its student strength which has reached nearly 8,000.
In the initial phase for creation of capital assets, the institute availed loan support of around Rs 64 crore from the Higher Education Financing Agency (HEFA), a joint venture company of Canara Bank and Ministry of Education (MoE). Through HEFA loan, the institute has completed its academic extension centre at Bhubaneswar, indoor sports stadium and laboratory facilities for Rs 20 crore, Rs 25 crore and Rs 19 crore respectively.
In the second phase, NIT-R has secured another HEFA loan of around Rs 199 crore for construction of a 1,000-seat boy’s hostel, a 500-seat girl’s hostel, 72 faculty residences and a sewage treatment plant. Except for the sewage plant, the rest three projects are in progress.
Sources said a fresh proposal has been submitted for HEFA loan of Rs 120 crore to take up construction of buildings for four major departments - Food Process Engineering, Architecture & Planning, School of Management and Earth & Atmospheric sciences.
In the Window 1 category of HEFA, NIT-R needs to repay only the principal loan amounts in 10 years with one installment in every six month.
In the meantime, the institute is working towards construction of a large building for its Civil Engineering department utilising its own corpus fund of Rs 91 crore. NIT-R’s corpus reserve too has seen significant jump to around Rs 570 crore from around Rs 350 crore in 2022.
Institute sources informed that additionally, a host of other infrastructure projects are underway with corporate donations and grant of the Ministry. These include construction of two 500-seat girl’s hostels with funding support of around Rs 43 crore from the Mahanadi Coalfields Ltd (MCL), a 500-seat EWS category hostel with Rs 35 crore funding by the Ministry and building for the Kendriya Vidyalaya on NIT-R campus with Rs 36 crore from the Coal India Ltd.
Plans are also afoot to construct 72 residences for non-teaching staff at a cost of around Rs 35 crore from the institute’s own resources.
NIT-R registrar Prof Rohan Dhiman said at the pace the institute is growing, it needs to urgently create adequate infrastructure facilities. The institute has significantly strengthened its financial discipline and working on a strategy to simultaneously build up its corpus and keep on adding new infrastructure.
Incidentally, the annual grant from the Ministry has also increased to around Rs 350 crore from Rs 190-Rs 225 crore in recent years. The institute generates around Rs 59 crore from student fees, external projects and consultancy services.
