President asks NITs to adopt villages

President Pranab Mukherjee has asked each of the 30 National Institutes of Technology (NITs) to adopt five villages and turn them into model ones - on the lines of Saansad Adarsh Gram Yojana launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

He was speaking at a two-day conference of directors of National Institutes of Technology at Rashtrapati Bhavan here Thursday.

Mukherjee said he noticed that NIT Jamshedpur was already working with seven villages, NIT Uttarakhand with 20 and NIT Jaipur with five.

He said villages can be transformed into model villages "by converging various schemes like Saansad Adarsh Gram Yojana, Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana, Swachch Bharat Mission and Digital India Programme".

Modi Oct 11 launched the Saansad Adarsh Gram Yojana under which every parliamentarian was entrusted with the task of developing physical and institutional infrastructure in three villages by 2019.

The president announced that the In-Residence Programme of Rashtrapati Bhavan would now be extended to young scholars from NITs.

He also called upon the human resource development ministry to take immediate steps for creation of a database of foreign educational experts and Persons of Indian Origin which can be utilised by our institutions for filling up vacant faculty positions.