Should NITs in Northeast get international guidance?

By NewsGram Staff Writer

Agartala: Union Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani on Friday expressed her desire to facilitate all-round development to the National Institute of Technologies (NIT) in the Northeastern region with guidance and lessons from internationally acclaimed academicians and experts.

"NITs in northeast states must sit together at the earliest to undertake some collaborative schemes for the all-round development of these national institutes," she said.

She proposed the idea of a website to be created by January next year and over 90,000 e-books and 10,000 journals to be made available.

"NIT authorities must get the experience and idea from the students too," she said, adding that the central government has launched various projects for the development of higher education in the country.

The HRD minister accompanied by her ministry's senior officials arrived in Agartala on Friday to hold a meeting with the education ministers. The union minister asked the education ministers to submit their government's views in writing on the proposed national education policy.

"The central government will obtain views from the Gram Panchayats to national level and also from the academicians and all stakeholders about the proposed education policy," Irani said at the meeting.

Tripura Education Minister Tapan Chakraborty said Friday's meeting was held as the follow up meeting of the 63rd meeting of the Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE) that was held in New Delhi on August 19 and told the reporters that in the CABE meeting, most northeast states wanted to remove the 'no-detention policy' at the elementary school level (up to class 8).

The minister said that the Left Front government strongly supported the plan for a new education policy, a process initiated by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance government.

(With inputs from IANS)