Dharamshala: Union cabinet, presided over by Prime Minister Narendra Modi today, scaled up funding for construction costs of establishing the 8 new IIT, which includes Mandi IIT, that were approved in the 2008-09 academic year.
Original sanction for construction cost of IIT Mandi which earlier was Rs 760 crore has been increased to Rs 1466 crores by the cabinet today.
Where each IIT typically has 10,000 students and requires about 50 lakh Sq.ft constructed area, in 2008, the estimated cost of these campuses was assessed at Rs. 760 crores each.
The construction costs of Bhubaneswar IIT was increased to Rs 1880 crore, Gandhinagar IIT to Rs 1716 crore, Hyderabad IIT to Rs 2075 crore, Indore IIT to Rs 1902 crore, Jodhpur IIT to Rs 1605, Panta IIT to Rs 1678 crore and Ropar IIT to Rs 1668 crore.
The cabinet noted that these estimates were prepared with 2006 Index rates and without the site survey that would have made them site specific and accurate. These IITs began to function without the identification and handing over of land for permanent campuses, further disadvantaging them. The land was provided by the State Governments later, in 2011-12.
The Detailed Project Reports suffered from several infirmities, since they were based on a template and not on site specifics, and on already outdated index rates. As a result, the cost of land development was not included, or of key elements like power grid line to site and water supply, and several statutory taxes and cesses.
Arvind Sharma is an award winning bi-lingual journalist with more than 20 years of experience.
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This was to ensure that there are no further cost and time overruns in completing the construction of the eight IITs.
The increase in expenditure due to escalation in both time and cost overrun is Rs 7,910 crore, an official statement said.