Cabinet approves takeover of 17 Regional Engineering Colleges

NEW DELHI: The Union Cabinet tonight approved takeover of 17 Regional Engineering Colleges in the country as National Institutes of Technology with Deemed to be University status.
Briefing reporters after the meeting, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said the Centre would fund these institutes fully unlike in the past when the Centre bore 65 per cent of the cost.
This involves an additional liability of Rs 70 crore annually on the exchequer under non-Plan head with an annual increase of ten per cent for a period of five years from 2002-03 onwards, she said.
The RECs are located at Allahabad, Bhopal, Calicut, Durgapur, Hamirpur, Jaipur, Jalandhar, Jamshedpur, Kurukshetra, Nagpur, Rourkela, Silchar, Srinagar, Surathkal, Surat, Tiruchirapalli and Warangal.
The Minister said making NITs fully Centrally funded would enable them to become national centres of excellence and help produce quality manpower comparable to IITs.