MHRD to review its land requirement policy

Talking about the need to set up such a committee, the notice says, “These norms were determined a long ago when land was available in abundance. However with the burgeoning population and consequent expansion of cities, land has increasingly become a scarce commodity. The recent experience in the ministry has been that requisite amount of land is not readily available and state governments have found it difficult to acquire land leading to inordinate delay in many central higher education institutions.”

The other committee members will include M K Kaw, former secretary of higher education, along with Anil Sahasrabudhe, Director, COEP Pune, Ashok Misra, chairman, Board of Governors, IIT Roorkee, Syed Bari, Vice Chancellor, Central University of Gujarat and K V Kamath, Chairman, Board of directors, ICICI bank.

The committee will be studying the land utilisation of the existing central institutions, even international universities and their land use and to suggest revised land requirements for various types of institutions in this age. Another common complaint among state government is that although land availability in rural and urban areas are different, there is still only a blanket rule for all locations. This will also be changed as the committee has also been asked ‘to recommend norms and criteria for determining the land requirement in different locations of the country taking into account the topography, class of city/ town etc.’