Gandhinagar, July 19: Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) has proposed to set up a world-class Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIT) at a cost of Rs 75 to 100 crore on a 50-acre campus on the Gandhinagar-Ahmedabad highway.The 2000-seat residential institute is equipped with a state-of-the-art technology-enabling centre and software development laboratories housing for staff, hostels and playgrounds. It is expected to be functional within 18 months. While a memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed between RIL and the government of Gujarat (GoG) recently, the state cabinet on Wednesday sanctioned a plot of land to RIL for Rs 3.90 crore at the rate of Rs 600 per square metre. The open land will be given to the company at a token rate of Re 1 on a 30-year lease.Briefing newsmen later, chief minister Keshubhai Patel said that RIL would bear the entire cost of implementing the project. The plot is ideally located between the state capital and Ahdmedabad, adjoining a 200-acre plot earmarked for the proposed InfoCity.
Minister of state for information technology Bimal Shah said that the IIIT would have several modules of courses from undergraduate to postgraduate levels, and will have an annual intake of 2,000 students.
The Reliance Group of Companies, already having basic telephony licence for The group, which started with its textile unit at Naroda in Ahmedabad, has subsequently built a huge pertrochemical complex at Hazira in south Gujarat and a petroleum refinery in Jamanagar.
The minister said that although Gujarat was initially slow to jump on the IT bandwagon, there was no stopping the state now.He said that training highly skilled manpower was an equally important component for a sunrise industry. He said that eight out of 61 international gateways have been recently sanctioned by the Centre for Gujarat. They included two to Reliance and one each to IceNet, Satyam, GlobeTel, STPI and GNFC. As part of its pro-active role in training manpower, GoG had entered into an MoU with Sea King Infrastructure Ltd (SKIL), promoters of the Pipavav and Positra ports, to set up a world-class marine institute at Positra in Jamnagar districtu.
Copyright © 2000 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.