Grant scheme for IITs to continue

In a reversal of the previous National Democratic Alliance government's policy, the Cabinet today decided to continue with Block Grant Scheme (BGS) for institutes of higher learning. But there will be some modifications.

Briefing reporters Minister of Information and Broadcasting S Jaipal Reddy said the government was seeking to give greater financial and functional autonomy to such institutes.

"Empowering institutes will not depend on non-planned budgetary support to create academic posts and make appointments to such posts on a contractual basis for fixed but renewable tenures," said a release.

The scheme stipulates that the level of corpus under the funding scheme may be allowed to go up to Rs 100 crore in the case of Indian Institutes of Technology and Indian Institute of Science, and Rs 50 crore for other institutes.

This pattern of funding will be on from the current financial year for five years and the scheme will be reviewed in 2010-11.

The modified BGS has been extended to the two new IITs, Guwahati and Roorkee, three new IIMs (Lucknow, Indore and Calicut), the Indian School of Mines (Dhanbad), the School of Planning and Architecture at Delhi, the National Institute of Industrial Engineering at Mumbai and the National Institute of Technical Teachers Training and Research.

The scheme also aims at encouraging institutes to generate more internal resources thereby improving the standards of education and research.

The continuation of the scheme is based on the experience of implementing it in the IITs at Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kharagpur and Kanpur, and the IIMs at Kolkata, Bangalore and Ahmedabad, besides in IISc, Bangalore.