By IANS,
New Delhi : A year after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s promise, the government Thursday approved seven new Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) to give a boost to higher education.
Among the proposed IIMs, four will be set up in Trichy (Tamil Nadu), Ranchi (Jharkhand), Raipur (Chhattisgarh) and Rohtak (Haryana). They will start classes in the 2010-11 academic year.
The other three will come up in Jammu and Kashmir, Uttarakhand and Rajasthan and they will get operational from the year after. The location of the IMMs in these states is yet to be decided.
Briefing reporters here on the cabinet decision, Information and Broadcasting Minister Ambika Soni said an allocation of Rs.451 crore (4.51 billion) as non-recurring expenditure and Rs.118 crore (1.18 billion) as recurring expenditure has been sanctioned for the first phase.
According to the Human Resource Development (HRD) ministry, each new IIM will start with 140 students. This number will go up to 560 eventually.
IIMs, considered the best B-Schools in the country, are also a significant brand name in the global management education.
The existing IIMs are in Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Kolkata, Lucknow, Indore, Kozhikode and Shilong.
Authorities said the existing IIMs will mentor the new IIMs, the way the old IITs have taken care of the new IITs in the country. For example, IIM-Bangalore is most likely to mentor IIM-Trichy.