Five more institutions may get eminence tag

: The human resource development (HRD) ministry is likely to take up the proposals of five more public institutions that were recommended by the Empowered Expert Committee (EEC) for institute of eminence (IoE) status.

The empowered expert committee (EEC) headed by former chief election commissioner N Gopalaswami that selects IoEs will consider IIT Madras, IIT Kharagpur, Delhi University, Jadavpur University, West Bengal and Anna University, Chennai for the status, officials familiar with the matter said.

They added that Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) did not make it to the short-list.

On Monday, the government named six IoEs, three public (IIT Delhi, IIT Bombay, and IISc, Bangalore) and three private (BITS Pilani, Jio Institute, and Manipal Global).

The government will provide ₹1,000 crore funds to the three public institutions in the next five years; the private institutes will not be eligible for government funding but will enjoy academic and administrative autonomy.

The committee was supposed to select 20 IoEs that will enjoy complete academic and administrative autonomy. However, only six were selected.

According to the report of the committee, a copy of which has been seen by HT, IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Kolkata, ICAR Delhi, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, ISI, Kolkata, TIFR, Mumbai, and TISS, Mumbai have been recommended for the tag of Special institutions (not IoE).

It said these institutions “hold great potential to reach national and global prominence in a singular field of study, e.g. management, agriculture, technology, medicine etc” and added that “many have already reached global prominence...”

NEW DELHI