Mentor role proves a burden for Warangal-NIT

Updated on: Wednesday, June 22, 2011

In what seems to be the general state of affairs in newly established technical institutions in the country, 90 students who have taken admission in NIT-Delhi will now have to study 1,523 km away in NIT-Warangal. Reason? NIT-Delhi is nothing but a virtual institution, that has neither a campus of its own nor a faculty.

The institution that came into existence after the Union government announced its formation in the year 2009, under the 11th Five-Year Plan is nevertheless admitting students to retain its "functional" tag. The students, 45 of whom are residents of Delhi, cannot return until NIT-Delhi at least has a temporary campus in place. Sources at NIT Warangal, the mentor institution, said that the new campus would take about two years to come up.

NIT-Delhi is one among the 10 new institutes set up in Arunachal Pradesh, Goa, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Pondicherry, Sikkim and Uttarakhand. NIT-Warangal said it is getting students from almost all the new NITs. Older NITs have been appointed mentors for all the fledgling institutes by the ministry of human resource development (MHRD) in 2010. The mentors are expected to provide academic and administrative help to the new institutions.

However, NIT-Warangal finds it tough to accommodate students from Delhi. "We had to make adjustments and put them up in overcrowded hostel rooms. Our laboratories too are cramped so are classrooms where 75-80 students are being accommodated instead of 60. The students from NIT-Delhi are in fact missing out on a good campus experience because of this makeshift arrangement they are forced to go through," a professor said.

NIT-Warangal officials fear that NIT-Delhi will continue to take students in the coming academic years as well, even if it fails to set up its own campus. "If that's the case, a total of 360 students will most probably be passing out from NIT-Warangal with a certificate that carries the insignia of NIT-Delhi," a senior faculty member from NIT-Warangal said. With the central government, putting enormous pressure on the mentor institutions to keep the new NITs running, NIT-Warangal will have to keep hosting students from Delhi, officials said.

NIT officials blamed the fate of the institute on the central government's lackadaisical attitude. While the institute was established two years ago, it got its first chairman and board of governors only in 2011. The unavailability of land has also become a major road block. "The institute heads are currently hunting for 400 acres of land in Delhi to base their campus. It is impossible to find such a large campus in Delhi," an official said.

Students said that they took admission in NIT-Delhi in spite of the shortcomings as they badly needed an NIT seat. "We were informed that NIT-Delhi will have a campus by 2011 and students will be admitted there. But since we wanted a seat in an NIT we decided to move to NIT-Warangal after we were told that the classes will be conducted here," said a student from Delhi.

Times of India

Mentor role proves a burden for Warangal-NIT

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