Decks cleared for transfer of land to IIM Amritsar

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, May 1

The permanent campus of IIM (Indian Institute of Management), Amritsar, is inching towards reality.

With the state Cabinet giving its nod on April 30, decks have been cleared to carry out construction work at the designated site near Manawala on the Amritsar-Jalandhar GT Road.

State Minister for Higher Education Surjit Singh Rakhra said that the Cabinet has given ex-post facto approval to transfer 60 acres in the name of the IIM Society free of cost. This has paved the way for setting up its permanent campus. The land was purchased at a cost of Rs 1.25 crore per acre from a private owner.

IIM Amritsar, the 15th IIM being set up by the Ministry of Human Resources Development, is already operational since August 6, 2015 from its transit campus located at the Punjab Institute of Technology.

“After furnishing papers for transferring land to the IIM Society’s name officially, the civil work, which is to be carried out by Central Public Works Department, will commence within a week. This will include campus infrastructure planning, design and construction. The initial instalment of central funds has already reached us. It will take 1.5 years for Punjab’s first IIM to be fully operational from its permanent campus,” Rakhra said.

This development means that the formal foundation-laying ceremony can be announced anytime soon.

Earlier, this ceremony was expected to be performed in July 2015 by Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley during his visit here, but it could not be executed as neither the land was registered nor the IIM’s society was constituted at that time.