State fails to finalise IIM Amritsar site

GS Paul

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, May 29 

Even as the state government had facilitated a temporary campus for the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) in Amritsar where the classes in the new academic session were to start from July 15, the Centre may not go ahead with this stop-gap arrangement. 

The reason is that the government has failed to finalise the site for setting up the permanent campus for the proposed institute later on. 

But sources said the students selected for IIM Amritsar may not have to suffer as there is a ‘plan B’ with the Centre, if no consensus is reached over the permanent site. 

Instead of banking on the state government, the Centre is thinking of holding the classes on the stipulated date from IIM Kozhikode, which was designated as mentor-trainer for IIM Amritsar, till it starts from its permanent campus.

With no decision over the final site, the Centre has put the project on hold ‘for the time being’. 

With 65 students for the only postgraduate degree in business management (PGDBM) course on offer, the maiden two-year batch (2015-17) was announced to commence from the premises of the Punjab Institute of Technology near Guru Nanak Dev University. 

The other management expertise programmes were to follow once the institute resumed full operation from its campus. Candidates, who cracked the Common Admission Test-2014, have already been shortlisted.

The monitoring team from Kozhikode — under whose supervision the work of the temporary campus was on – returned on May 13. 

SP Goyal, Joint Secretary, Technical Education Department, Union Ministry of Home Affairs, said that under the present circumstances, classes for the current session could not be started. 

“The sites offered to us were not found to be conducive for setting up the IIM and it has been conveyed to the authorities. As there was no communication from the state government about the alternative site, uncertainty prevailed about starting the classes from July 15. We have put the proposal on hold as of now,” he said.

The two sites — 192 acres at Awan village in Ajnala block and 150 acres at Sheron Bagha village near Baba Bakala — failed to impress the central site-selection committee which visited these places in April. 

Awan village’s rural and remote location away from township and Sheron Bagha’s placement on the bank of the Beas were the major drawbacks. 

It has been learnt that another site — where the Amritsar Central jail is located — had caught the fancy of the central committee, but the state government was not ready to part with this prime land located on Airport Road. There is a multi-crore profit-making proposal to construct multi-storey residential and commercial units on this PUDA land, as the jail would be shifted to its new location at Fatahpur in a year or so.

Additional Deputy Commissioner Sandeep Rishi said that negotiations were on for a 60-acre private land at Mannawala, near Amritsar.