Orissa to meet infra needs for proposed IIT

The Orissa government has geared up to meet the requirement of external infrastructure facilities for the proposed Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) near Bhubaneswar.

Apart from providing road communication facilities, the government will also supply water and electricity to the site at Arugul mouza in Jatni Tehsil.

The Centre had asked the Orissa government to provide free land and develop external infrastructure for the proposed institute.

The state industry department has drawn a three-year development plan for the IIT. According to preliminary estimates, the investment will be about Rs 50 crore.

While providing water supply from Naraj to the IIT site is estimated to cost Rs 24 crore, another Rs 20 crore will be spent on supplying electricity at the project location. Besides, a flyover will have to be constructed and roads inside the campus need to be redesigned to bypass the railway line running through the site.

The state government has selected 891 acres in Arugul mouza for setting up the IIT. There is a patch of 20 acres of private land in the identified 891 acres and the state government will acquire it.

“A three-year plan for the development of the external infrastructure including water supply and electricity is being drawn up and we are working out the details of the plan,” a senior official of the state industry department told Business Standard.

The industry department is in talks with other departments like IT, urban development and science and technology for integrating the water supply system of the IIT with that of Infocity-II, Khurda-Jatni townships and National Institute of Science Education and Research (NISER), coming up in the same area.

If this comes through, the cost of supplying water to the IIT campus will be relatively low, sources added.

Similarly, the electricity requirement of the IIT campus is estimated at 20 Mw. While the cost of 132 KV transmission line will be constructed by OPTCL, the required 33 KV/11KV line will be laid by power utility Central Electricity Supply Utility (CESU).

Meanwhile, the visit of the Site Selection Committee (SSC) for the IIT in Orissa has been delayed. SSC, headed by Ashok Thakur, additional secretary (technical education), Ministry of Human Resource Development, was expected to visit Orissa on November 30 for finalising the site but the state government is yet to receive any communication in this regard.

The state government today sent a reminder to the HRD ministry requesting the visit of the SSC at the earliest, sources added.