The opening of the new campus of the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research on 200 acres of land at Vithura is expected to give an impetus to the development of the region.
Paving way for starting courses from the new campus from next academic year, Union Minister for Human Resource Development Smriti Irani on Thursday inaugurated a three-storey Chemical Science block which would house as many as 28 research labs, besides classrooms, faculty rooms, common instrumentation labs and a seminar hall. She also inaugurated the Agasthiar and Ponmudi hostel blocks.
The campus will see further developments in the next one-and-a-half years with the inauguration of the Physics and Science blocks.
The setting up of the campus at Vithura has brought hopes to the residents on the further development of the area. At the inaugural function, Ms. Irani agreed to consider the setting up of a Kendriya Vidyalaya, if a request in this regard came from the State government. She was responding to a demand made by Member of Parliament A. Sampath and local MLA K.S. Sabarinadhan on the need to establish a KV considering the emerging importance of the area.
The Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology at Valiamala was not too far and there was a proposal to establish the campus of the National Institute of Speech and Hearing (NISH), they said.
The State government had decided to allot 50 acres of land from the jersey farm of the Animal Husbandry Department at Vithura to set up NISH, which would see the institute being upgraded to the level of a national university.
The inauguration of the campus has raised expectations of the people on development of roads at Vithura. Chief Minister Oommen Chandy agreed to consider the demand for widening the road from Theriode junction to IISER campus if land acquisition problems were addressed. Chairperson, Board of Governors, IISER, Tessy Thomas said an incubation centre for industry participation in research would be set up on the Vithura campus.
