IITs at a glance (With: High time to appoint IIT-KGP director: Teachers, alumni)

* There are 16 IITs. The oldest is IIT Kharagpur, founded in May 1950 at the site of the Hijli Detention Camp in Kharagpur. IITs at Delhi, Powai (Mumbai), Kanpur, Madras (Chennai), Roorkee, and Guwahati are the other older institutions.

* New IITs have been opened in Ropar, Bhubaneswar, Gandhinagar, Hyderabad, Indore, Patna, Mandi, Jodhpur, and Varanasi (IIT-BHU).

* The IITs are a group of autonomous public engineering institutes.

* Governed by the Institutes of Technology Act, 1961, they have been declared institutions of national importance.

* The academic policies of each IIT are decided by its Senate. This comprises all professors of the IIT and student representatives.

* The intake capacity of the IITs was 19,909 in 2012, while 512,000 students appeared in the entrance exam.

* According to the Times Higher Education survey, three IITs are the only institutions from India to appear in the list of Asia's top 100 universities. IIT-Kharagpur is ranked 30th, IIT-Bombay is 33rd and IIT-Roorkee 56th.

* Over 80 percent of the financial needs of the IITs and their entire capital costs are funded by the government.

* The IITs were allocated Rs.2,220 crore in the budget for 2013-14, almost double of what they received in 2012-13.