MHRD grants Rs 456 crore to IIT Kharagpur for Research & Infrastructure Development

In a tweet on Thursday, the HRD Ministry has confirmed that it has approved a total grant of Rs. 456.10 crore as one-time additional capital funding for IIT Kharagpur and three other IITs.

The funding has been earmarked for lab infrastructure, equipment etc.

As per the Ministry announcement, Rs. 151.19 crore has been earmarked for IIT Kharagpur followed by Rs. 105 cr for IIT Delhi, Rs. 103.41 crore for IIT Madras and Rs 96.5 cr for IIT Bombay. The funding was approved based on proposals submitted by the older IITs for augmentation of infrastructure and facilities for holistic excellence.

"IIT Kharagpur has been focusing towards attracting young talented academicians and postdoctoral fellows from across the world. For this, we need, on one hand, world-class laboratories, high-end equipment to conduct cutting-edge research and on the other hand quality living experience such as accommodation facilities. Our proposal significantly highlighted this aspect and we aim to use this additional towards building these facilities" said Prof. Partha Pratim Chakrabarti, Director, IIT Kharagpur.

The Institute has already drawn the blueprints to build lab infrastructure of top global standard and acquire equipment for technological convergence domains like manufacturing, transportation, VLSI design, cloud computing, smart infrastructure and affordable healthcare among others.

"We will soon undertake a housing project for facilitating international faculty and postdoctoral fellows. We understand the differential need of these people and are committed to offering them the same world-class experience for their limited durational association with us" added Chakrabarti.

A significant part of the funding will also be used to offer challenge grants and equipment for Central Research facility of the Institute making them accessible to both faculty and students for research work. Students' innovation projects will also receive a major boost through this supplementary funding.

Another aspect which the Institute will be exploring is students' amenities and well-being. The Institute has already set earmarked Rs. 10 crore for sports activities and infrastructure and undertaken crowdsourced campaigns as well for promoting students' welfare activities.

"We at IITKGP are extremely happy & thank MHRD for having agreed to support almost the total requirement of the proposal submitted. We look forward to an incremental change in the size of faculty and postdoctoral fellows while fostering students innovations and overall development" stated Chakrabarti.

Image: Creative Commons