Odisha approves Rs 10 cr for XIMB's new campus

In its effort to impart quality professional courses, the state government has approved Rs 10 crore for establishing a branch of Xavier Institute of Management (XIM) at Sambalpur.

“The proposed institute shall be a general management unit with specialisation in human resource development programme and other specialisation with an intake capacity of 120 students,” said RV Singh, officer on special duty, state planning and coordination department in a letter to the secretary, employment and technical education & training(E&TE&T).

For the infrastructural development of the proposed institute in Sambalpur, the state government will grant Rs 10 crore to its parent institute Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneswar (XIMB), one of the premier B-schools in the country.

 

The department has asked the E&TE&T department to expedite the processes of signing the memorandum of understanding (MoU) with XIMB for facilitating the establishment of the new campus at Sambalpur.

In lieu of support given by the state government, the new campus of XIM will have 33 per cent reservation of the total seats for students of Odisha domicile (including 20 per cent seats reserved for schedule cast and schedule tribe students).

“It will be very difficult to start new programmes as the All-India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) will bar new engineering, management colleges from 2014. Until and unless the state government grants us the University status we will not sign any pact with the state government for the new campus at Sambalpur,” said a top official of XIMB.

Meanwhile, the premier B School has started construction of its second campus spread over 35 acres of land in Khurda , close to the campus of Orissa Engineering College for which the management institute had originally sought 100 acres for its proposed second campus and later scaled down its requirement to 60 acres. The state government has earmarked Rs 4 crore in the budget under state plan towards establishment of Xavier’s Institute of Management at Sambalpur and Bolangir.