Bhubaneswar: Directors of various Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) stressed on the implementation of Project VISWAJIT– a programme meant for providing support to the frontline IITs to figure and rank amongst the top institutions in the world. 13 IIT Directors (nine in person and four through skype) discussed the modalities of Project VISWAJIT at the 154th meeting of All IIT Directors held, on 11 September 2016 (Sunday) at IIT Bhubaneswar, Argul. It can be mentioned here that recently, IIT Council had cleared Project VISHWAJEET, which aims to provide supports to 7 IITs to feature among the world top ranking institutes rated by international ranking agencies.
Prof. R.V. Raja Kumar, Director, IIT Bhubaneswar chaired the meeting, which discussed on various issues related to these premier institutes. The meeting also stressed on the need to hike admission capacity of the IITs to accommodate more students across all categories of programmes spanning from undergraduate to PhD level.
In addition to the above issues, an IITBBS statement said the directors also discussed on the following subjects: Issues related to governance of IIT system and its future, student’s scholarship, Research Programme and welfare of faculty & staff, modalities of facilities for recruiting foreign faculties for teaching at IIT system, mechanism for speedy construction of infrastructure with quality in new IITs, to encourage PSUs to recruit students from IITs, possible enhancement of admission through JEE in India and of foreign students in IITs through Super Numeri allocation of seats.
At the IIT Directors meeting, the following directors were present: Prof. R. V. Raja Kumar, Director, IIT Bhubaneswar; Prof. V. Ramgopal Rao, Director, IIT Delhi; Prof.Pradipta Banerji, Director, IIT Roorkee; Prof.Indranil Manna, Director, IIT Kanpur; Prof.Partha P. Chakrabarti, Director, IIT Kharagpur (Via Video Conference); Prof. Rajeev Sangal, Director, IIT BHU; Prof. U B Desai, Director, IIT Hyderabad; Prof. Pradeep Mathur, Director, IIT Indore (Via Video Conference); Prof. Timothy A Gonsalves, Director, IIT Mandi; Prof.Pushpak Bhattacharyya, Director, IIT Patna; Prof.Gautam Biswas, Director, IIT Guwahati (Via Video Conference); Prof.Sarit Kumar Das, Director, IIT Ropar; Prof. Bhaskar Ramamurthi, Director, IIT Madras (Via Video Conference); Prof. Amit Prashant, Dean, Academic, IIT Gandhinagar attended for Prof. S K Jain, Director, IIT Gandhinagar.
Prof. C V R Murty, Director, IIT Jodhpur could not attend the meeting due to personal health reasons. Prof. Devang Kakkar, Director, IIT Bombay could not attend since he is in abroad.
