PANAJI
Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar has welcomed the Central government’s decision to grant approval to Indian Institute of Technology at Goa, saying that they will expedite the formalities to hand over the approved site at Loliem to the Central government.
“With the approval, we hope that we can start the first batch of the IIT from this academic year onwards,” Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar said adding that while the infrastructure is being put in place, the government could make use of the edifice meant for a mining course or at the present Goa Engineering College Campus at Farmagudi.
The Union Cabinet which met on Wednesday gave its ex-post facto approval to amend The Institutes of Technology Act, 1961 for incorporation of new IITs at Tirupati (AP), Palakkad (Kerala), Dharwar (Karnataka), Bhilai (Chhattisgarh), Goa, Jammu (Jammu and Kashmir) and conversion of Indian School of Mines (ISM), Dhanbad to an IIT under the law.
Earlier in the day, Union Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar tweeted his thanks to Union Education Minister Smriti Irani and Prime Minister Narendra Modi (in that order) for helping Goa take “one more step towards becoming a knowledge centre.”
Earlier, a team from the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development had inspected the site at Loliem in Canacona and had granted its approval to the site given that it met the criteria of being 100m away from NH-17, 35km from a railway station and around 60km from the Dabolim airport. IITs for Goa and several other places in the country were announced in a budget speech earlier.
