IIM Amritsar project gets going
We have allocated ₹350 crore for the campus in the first phase; ₹250 crore will be given in the 2nd phase. RAMESH POKHRIYAL ‘NISHANK, Union HRD minister
AMRITSAR:UNION human resource development minister Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’ presided over the groundbreaking ceremony of ₹600-crore permanent campus of the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) on Monday.
Construction has, thus, started at the institute located on national highway-1 at Manawala village, on the outskirts of Amritsar, and the project is expected to be completed in 2-3 years.
This is the second such ceremony to be held in two years at the first IIM of the state, and the 15th in the country.
The institute is functioning from a building at the Government Polytechnic College, near the main campus of GNDU. Students are irked at being taught from a temporary campus.
In 2015, the then Union finance minister, Arun Jaitley, had announced the IIM in his budget speech; he had laid the foundation stone in 2016.
On Monday, Punjab chief minister was scheduled to be present as the guest of honour, but he did not turn up. Cabinet minister Tript Rajinder Singh Bajwa attended the ceremony on his behalf.
“I am happy to announce that ₹350 crore have been allocated for building the campus in the first phase; ₹250 crore will be given in the second phase,” Pokhriyal said.
“The construction of the IIM campus would have started much earlier, but one acre was embroiled in a dispute. As a result, we could not prepare the Detailed Project Report (DPR). As soon as we got clearance for the stretch, we took no time from our end,” he said.
He added that soon the ministry would son release a visual of the project.
Speaking on the behalf of the Punjab government, which has given 60 acre for the campus, Bajwa thanked the union government for gifting Punjab’s first IIM to Amritsar.
“I assure the Centre of full cooperation from the state. We also plan to open a branch of this institute in Mohali,” Bajwa added.
IIM Amritsar director professor Nagarajan Ramamoorthy thanked all digniataries for support. The institute’s Board of Governors (BOG) chairman Sanjay Gupta and IIM Kozhikode director, professor Debashish Chatterjee, were also among those present on the occasion.
₹490-CR INTER-FAITH STUDY CENTRE TO COME UP AT GNDU
Pokhriyal added that the Centre was celebrating the 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak on a large scale.
He added, “An inter-faith study centre will be set up at Guru Nanak Dev University at a cost of ₹493 crore to mark the 550th birth anniversary. We will provide facilities for studying Guru Nanak’s philosophy.”
He added that the Centre was also planning to get a Guru Nanak chair functional at universities in the UK and Canada.