By IANS
New Delhi : The Rs.4.3-billion Rajiv Gandhi Institute for Petroleum Technology secured parliamentary approval, with the Lok Sabha Monday passing the bill amid opposition protests. The Rajya Sabha has already approved the bill.
The proposed petroleum institute will be set up in Rae Bareli in Uttar Pradesh, the constituency of Congress party chief Sonia Gandhi.
“I can understand the significance of the Uttar Pradesh state, particularly Rae Bareli and Amethi for the Congress party, but the government should set up institutes in other states too,” said Tathagat Satpathi, Biju Janata Dal (BJD) parliamentarian from Orissa, while participating in the discussion over the bill in the Lok Sabha.
Rosa Singh, a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP, supported the bill. However, she raised objections over the government’s move to name the institute after late Rajiv Gandhi.
“Why is it that the government is setting up institutes in the memory of late Rajiv Gandhi only and ignoring other luminaries like Jawahar Lal Nehru, Subhas Chandra Bose and Indira Gandhi?” she asked.
Later, replying to the discussion on the bill, Minister of Petroleum Murli Deora assured the house that the government was committed not to raise fuel prices.
“Although oil companies’ under-recoveries are piling up, the government has not revised prices on fuels, especially kerosene, keeping aam aadmi (common man) in mind,” maintained Deora.
“Nowhere else in the world is kerosene available to the people for Rs.9 per litre,” the minister pointed out.
Earlier, Deora had strongly defended the bill in the Rajya Sabha, He said: “It is in the interest of the nation that the government nurture the institute in its nascent and crucial stages of development to enable it to launch and run its programmes without compromise and set up world-class infrastructure while offering courses of a high standard.”
“In the absence of the status of a ‘institute of national importance’, it would not be possible to attract eminent faculty members and meritorious students,” the minister had added.
“The gap between the availability and requirement of trained manpower in this field in India would be about 36,000 by 2019,” Deora said while quoting the findings of a study conducted by consultancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers.
The institute will commence its academic operations by admitting students in basic undergraduate courses from academic year 2008-09 from a rented campus.
On becoming fully operational, the institute would have seven bachelor of technology, six integrated master degrees, eight masters of technology and masters of business administration, and 12 postgraduate diploma and PhD programmes, the minister had said.