New IITs Lack in Quality Learning Due to Poor Infrastructure: CAG report
New IITs Lack in Quality Learning Due to Poor Infrastructure: CAG report
Out of the eight, five IITs did not fix an intake for the PhD courses while the rest had shortfalls in admissions to these courses. The institutes also had vacancies in faculty positions which affected quality education.

The eight new Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) established in 2008 and 2009 lack infrastructure which has affected the quality of education and student intake, as per a CAG report on “Performance Audit of Setting up of new Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs)” for the period 2014-19. The eight new IITs include IIT Bhubaneswar, IIT Gandhinagar, IIT Hyderabad, IIT Indore, IIT Jodhpur, IIT Mandi, IIT Patna, and IIT Ropar.

IIT Bhubhaneshwar and Jodhpur were unable to introduce the target number of courses while none of the eight IITs was able to attain the required intake of students at the end of the sixth year, the report revealed. There has been a shortfall in enrolment into PG programmes as well.

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The eight IITs were unable to generate enough internal receipts and remained dependent on the government for grants and there were delays in taking up the construction work, the CAG report said. “Audit observed that there were infirmities in the financial management exercised by the IITs. The capital outlay had to be revised as there were delays in taking up the construction of infrastructure development. IITs were unable to generate sufficient internal receipts and thus remained dependent on the government for grants,” it said.

Out of the eight, five IITs did not fix an intake for the PhD courses while the rest had shortfalls in admissions to these courses. The institutes also had vacancies in faculty positions which affected quality education. The representation of students belonging to reserved categories was also very low, the report added.

The IITs also received very low levels of funding for research projects, sponsored by non-government sources and hence they remained dependent on the government for funding of their research activities.

“There were shortfalls in a number of meetings held by the Board of Governors, Senate, Finance Committee, and BWC in all IITs during the five-year period 2014-19. Further, specific instances of lapses due to the inadequate working of the governing bodies was also observed in four IITs,” said the report.

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The construction of academic buildings, hostels, and laboratories was undertaken in a phased manner in all IITs from 2012, however, the pace of the construction did not correspond to the increase of students and faculty members. The delays in construction were high in five of the IITs — IIT Hyderabad took up to 56 months, IIT Mandi up to 41 months, IIT Ropar up to 39 months, IIT Gandhinagar, and IIT Indore up to 37 months, the CAG report revealed.

These delays led to “the laboratory/research requirement of students not being met, thus affecting the quality of their learning.” This also resulted in low student intake, inadequate residential accommodation, and delay in installation of equipment. The overall student intake target was 18,880 students, but only 6,224 students were admitted across all the eight IITs during the first six years.

As per the IITs, the reasons behind the delays were the longer time taken to finalise designs, obtain regulatory clearances, statutory approvals, shortage of labour, contractors, and remoteness of the area.

Due to these delays the overall cost overrun by Rs 8,252 crore for all the eight IITs, the report added. “It was observed that none of the eight IITs attained the stipulated cumulative intake of 2,360 students at the end of the sixth year (2013-14),” it added.

— With PTI inputs

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