The new HRD Minister, Prakash Javadekar has been gearing up to implement all the pending PMO projects which were pending when Smriti Irani was the HRD Minister. He convened the first meeting on 12-July-2016 with IIIT Council an apex governing the body.
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The discussion was about giving deemed university status to IIITs. He took the decision that the 20 IIITs will be set up under Public and Private Partnerships (PPP). The IIITs will granted the status of deemed universities which will enable them to grant degrees. Around 1,300 students are enrolled in the IIITs. Previously, it has been stated that the IIITs would work with partial private partnership and will not be funded by the government as being done to IITs.
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According to the sources, the ministry is likely to agree to the suggestions of PMO that the minimum corpus for the establishment of 20 World Class Universities will be brought down from Rs. 1,000 crore. These institutions will be highly autonomy and the course duration is left to individual institutions.
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The Minster has also fast-tracked the project related to the setup of Wi-Fi to 38 central universities. The ministry is planning to set up Wi-Fi zones not only in central universities but also all other central educational institutions. The ministry directed the government-owned National Informatics Central Services to implement the project within 12 weeks which has been struck for years.