Four years on, work on IIIT in Sonepat yet to start

BS Malik        

The construction work of the Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) at Kilorad village, near Sonepat, has not started even more than four and a half years after the project was launched. The contractor has even stopped  the construction of the boundary wall around 50 acres earmarked for the project halfway after spending Rs 35 lakh out of the tender amount of Rs 1.35 crore.

The foundation stone of the project was laid on December 21, 2013, during the previous Congress government in the state. It was to be completed by 2017 at a cost of around Rs 40 crore. The Kilorad gram panchayat had leased about 50 acres to the Technical Education Department for the project.

The delay in the work on the Rs 40-crore project is being viewed as the lackadaisical attitude of the government. Congress leaders, including Rohtak MP Deepender Singh Hooda, suspect that the construction of the boundary wall has been stopped to shift the project from Sonepat to some other place.

Besides, the government had started classes for the IIIT in the National Institute at Kurukshetra in 2014. The first batch of 78 students passed out this year and they are being given provisional degrees.

Deputy Commissioner Vinay Singh attended a meeting of the officers of various departments concerned with the IIIT project in Chandigarh recently. He says that some changes were made in the original plan in 2017 with the objective that a society would run the institute on a no profit, no loss basis. A number of meetings have been held but there has been no progress in the matter so far, he adds.

“There are different rules for transferring land from a department to another department and from a department to the society,” says Vinay Singh. At present the land is in the name of the Haryana Technical Education Department.