Follow us
Three Public Institutes of Eminence, which include the two IITs in Mumbai and Delhi and IISc Bengaluru, have raised their issues with the lack of funding and the slow rate of releasing the funds by the government, which has hampered their ambitions of undertaking big projects and activities.
The three Institutes of Eminence (IoEs), i.e. Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) in Mumbai & Delhi and Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bengaluru, have raised issues regarding the rate at which the HRD Ministry has been providing funding under the IoE scheme.
The three institutes raised the issue in their presentation to the EEC or Empowered Expert Committee on 26th September 2019. The IoEs had received their “Eminence” tag in July of 2018. In their presentation, the institutes indicated the number of challenges that they have to face due to lack of funding and a slow rate of funding by the government.
Under the IoE scheme, the Ministry of Human Resource Development is required to fund the public institutes funding of ₹1,000 to each “eminent” public institute, over a period of five years. As per the records, IIT Delhi received ₹98 crores since July 2018, meanwhile, IISc Bengaluru received ₹78 crores and IIT Bombay received ₹43 crores. The Institutes, however, requested for more funding, compared to the funds they had received. IIT Delhi had projected demand of ₹200 crores, while IISc Bengaluru required ₹167 crores, meanwhile, IIT Bombay sent in a request for more funds in May 2019.
The former Chief Election Commissioner, N Gopalaswami, stated that the information that has been brought forth by the institutes is incomplete. He further asked whether the Institutes had been able to spend the money that had been provided to them previously. The EEC has the responsibility of recommending the Institutes for the IoE tag, while, also monitoring the progress of the ones that have been tagged with IoE status.
A Senior Official from the MHRD also pointed towards the money that the institutes are yet to spend. He stated that there are protocols in releasing funds, which requires the institutes to spend the previous funds to 20% in order to release more funds to the institutes.
As per a statement by a leading News Agency, the institutes have a huge amount of their funds still waiting to be spent. IIT Delhi has ₹73.54 crores, IISc Bengaluru ₹56.53 crores and IIT Bombay has ₹42,97 crores from their original funding still unspent as on 30th September 2019.
Also Read:New Regulations for College Funding To be Formed by UGC
An official from the three “Eminent” Institutes stated that they are requesting a bit more flexibility in the release of the funds. He stated that the Government should look at the funding of IoEs “as a broad enabler for achieving excellence, rather than a fine-grained approach to release and utilization”.
Also Read:Govt Allocates ₹600 Crores for 6 New MBBS Colleges in Tamil Nadu
The official further stated that with the current rate of release of funds and the inadequate funds as well restrict the institutes from taking on big projects or activities. He added that the processes will be made easier if the funds are associated with an activity or project, instead of being released under “fixed conventional heads”.
