New central varsities, IITs unlikely in the near future

"Right now, our effort should be on consolidating what we have created," HRD Minister M M Pallam Raju said replying to supplementaries on setting up new IITs and Central Universities.

He said government's attempt would be to get the disciplines going, improve the kind of qualitative research that is happening in the IITs that have been newly established.

On concerns of members over Indian institutions missing from the list of top 100 institutes world over, Raju said the parameters used in these international ratings did not necessarily apply to Indian institutions.

"These international ranking systems use different values, indices and parameters to rank higher educational institutions. These criteria are neither universally accepted nor recognised and are therefore sometimes subjected to criticism in academic circles," he said.

Some of the parameters used by ranking systems may not be relevant for Indian higher educational institutions and therefore, these rankings cannot constitute the basis for benchmarking of Indian institutions, Raju said.

"Though some institutions of the country like IITs and IIMs are comparable in quality and standards to any highly ranked university in the world, they are not able to figure in top ranked institutions due to their focus of limited programmes and disciplines," he said.