State awaits Centre's nod on 2nd IIIT

The Orissa government has submitted its proposal to the Centre for setting up of the second International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) in the state.

The state government is now awaiting the Centre's nod in this regard. The second IIIT will be set up on the public private partnership (PPP) mode.

“The state government has already submitted its proposal to the Centre for the second IIIT in the state. We are awaiting the final approval from the Centre to go ahead”, Pradipta K Mohapatra, the state IT secretary told Business Standard.

It may be noted that the Centre planned to set up 20 more IIITs across the country on the PPP mode. The state government has identified around 100 acres of land at Rangeilunda near Berhampur for setting up the second IIIT.

Meanwhile, the full-fledged campus of the existing IIIT in the state is scheduled to be inaugurated by the state chief minister on October 9 this year.

The new campus of IIIT-Bhubaneswar is coming up on 23.5 acres of land at Gothpatna on the outskirts of the city at an investment of Rs 48 crore. Plans are also afoot to get the deemed university status for this institute.

The institute is presently operating out of the campus of the Orissa Computer Application Centre (OCAC) in the city.

The institute is expected to be fully operational in the next five years. Once the institute is fully operational, the student intake will go up to 2,000. The faculty strength is expected to be about 20 by the end of 2009.

Earlier, IIIT-Bhubaneswar had announced that it would offer BTech courses in four streams of engineering as well as doctoral programmes from the 2009-10 academic session.

The BTech courses would have a total intake of 240 students. These courses would be offered in four streams of engineering- computer science, electronics, information technology and electrical engineering.