INDIAN INSTITUTES OF TECHNOLOGY (IITS)

INDIAN INSTITUTES OF TECHNOLOGY (IITS)

Ø  The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) are a group of autonomous public engineering and management institutes of India.

Ø  The IITs are governed by the Institutes of Technology Act, 1961 which has declared them as "institutions of national importance", and lays down their powers, duties, framework for governance etc.

Ø  The Institutes of Technology Act, 1961 lists sixteen institutes located at Bhubaneswar, Chennai, Delhi, Gandhinagar, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Indore, Jodhpur, Kanpur, Kharagpur, Mandi, Mumbai, Patna, Ropar, Roorkee and Varanasi.

Ø  Each IIT is an autonomous institution, linked to the others through a common IIT Council, which oversees their administration.

Ø  The IITs award degrees starting from B.Tech to Ph.D.

Ø  The IITs have a common admission process for undergraduate admissions. It was based on IIT-JEE, replaced by Joint Entrance Examination in 2013.

Ø  The graduate level program that awards M. Tech. degree in engineering is administered by the older IITs (Kharagpur, Bombay, Madras, Kanpur, Delhi, Varanasi, Guwahati, Roorkee). M.Tech. admission decisions are made on the basis of Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE).

Ø  In addition to B. Tech and M. Tech programs IITs also award other graduate degrees such as M.Sc. in Engineering, Maths, Physics and Chemistry, MBA, PhD and more. Admission to these programs are through Common Admission Test (CAT), Joint Admission Test to M.Sc. (JAM) and Common Entrance Examination for Design (CEED).

HISTORY OF INDIAN INSTITUTES OF TECHNOLOGY

Ø  The history of the IIT system dates back to 1946 when Sir Jogendra Singh of the Viceroy's Executive Council set up a committee whose task was to consider the creation of Higher Technical Institutions for post-war industrial development in India.

Ø  The 22-member committee, headed by Nalini Ranjan Sarkar, recommended the establishment of these institutions in various parts of India, with affiliated secondary institutions.

Ø  The first Indian Institute of Technology was founded in May 1950 at the site of the Hijli Detention Camp in Kharagpur.

Ø  On 15 September 1956, the Parliament of India passed the Indian Institute of Technology (Kharagpur) Act, declaring it as an Institute of National Importance.

Ø  On the recommendations of the Sarkar Committee, four campuses were established at Mumbai (1958), Chennai (1959), Kanpur (1959), and Delhi (1961). The location of these campuses was chosen to be scattered throughout India to prevent regional imbalance.

Ø  The Indian Institutes of Technology Act was amended to reflect the addition of new IITs.

Ø  Student agitations in the state of Assam made Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi promise the creation of a new IIT in Assam. This led to a sixth campus at Guwahati under the Assam Accord in 1994.

Ø  The University of Roorkee, India's oldest engineering college, was conferred IIT status in 2001.

Ø  On 1 October 2003, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee announced plans to create more IITs "by upgrading existing academic institutions that have the necessary promise and potential".

Ø  Subsequent developments led to the formation of the S K Joshi Committee in November 2003 to guide the selection of the five institutions which would become the five new IITs.

Ø  Based on the initial recommendations of the Sarkar Committee, it was decided that further IITs should be spread throughout the country.

Ø  When the government expressed its willingness to correct this regional imbalance, 16 states demanded IITs.

Ø  Since the S K Joshi Committee prescribed strict guidelines for institutions aspiring to be IITs, only seven colleges were selected for final consideration.

Ø  Plans are also reported to open IITs outside India, though not enough progress has been made in this regard.

Ø  Eventually in the 11th Five year plan, eight states were identified for establishment of new IITs, and IT-BHU was converted into an IIT.

LOCATION OF IITs:

Sr.    No.	Name	Short Name	Established	City/Town	State/UT
1.	IIT Kharagpur	IITKGP	1951	Kharagpur	West Bengal
2.	IIT Bombay	IITB	1958	Mumbai	Maharashtra
3.	IIT Kanpur	IITK	1959	Kanpur	Uttar Pradesh
4.	IIT Madras	IITM	1959	Chennai	Tamil Nadu
5.	IIT Delhi	IITD	1963 (founded in 1961)	New Delhi	Delhi
6.	IIT Guwahati	IITG	1994	Guwahati	Assam
7.	IIT Roorkee	IITR	2001 (founded in 1847)	Roorkee	Uttarakhand
8.	IIT Ropar	IITRPR	2008	Rupnagar (Ropar)	Punjab
9.	IIT Patna	IITP	2008	Patna	Bihar
10.	IIT Jodhpur	IITJ	2008	Jodhpur	Rajasthan
11.	IIT Bhubaneswar	IITBBS	2008	Bhubaneswar	Orissa
12.	IIT Gandhinagar	IITGN	2008	Gandhinagar	Gujarat
13.	IIT Hyderabad	IITH	2008	Hyderabad	Andhra Pradesh
14.	IIT Mandi	IIT Mandi	2009	Mandi	Himachal Pradesh
15.	IIT Indore	IITI	2009	Indore	Madhya Pradesh
16.	IIT (BHU) Varanasi	IIT(BHU)	2012 (founded in 1919)	Varanasi	Uttar Pradesh

FUTURE IITs  :

Ø  Indian School of Mines, with approval of its Finance Committee, Executive Board and General Council, had forwarded the proposal for its conversion into an IIT in 2009, after which a detailed project report was prepared as per the directions of the Union Ministry of Human Resource and Development.

Ø  In September 2011, a resolution was passed by the Government of Jharkhand, recommending the Government of India to convert ISM to an IIT.

Ø  In June 2012, the Planning Commission favoured this conversion during the 12th Five Year Plan (2012-2017), while maintaining ISM's core competency in mining and geology.

Ø  The conversion of ISM to IIT became a part of current 5 Year Plan after its passage by the Prime Minister headed National Development Council in December 2012.

Ø  It may be noted that for this conversion, a Bill has to be introduced in Parliament by the Union HRD Minister.

Ø  Another planned IIT is at Palakkad in the state of Kerala, as was announced in September 2011 by P. K. Abdu Rabb, the Minister for Education of the Government of Kerala. However, as establishing an IIT is done by an act of parliament, the local government role is limited, and this still requires several steps by the central government.

Ø  Another IIT was proposed in 2009 at Muddenahalli, Karnataka. In January 2011 a proposal was made to establish the Karnataka IIT by upgrading University Visvesvaraya College of Engineering to IIT status.