Bhubaneswar: Putting all the hype and hoopla to rest, the Centre has finally decided to set up Indian Institute of Management (IIM)-Odisha in Sambalpur. Union IT and Telecom minister Ravi Shankar Prasad informed this to the media after Union Cabinet approved the proposal in New Delhi today.
Prasad said admissions will be held for all the 140 seats in Sambalpur IIM though the visiting Central team had recommended that student intake will be possible for around 80 aspirants only if the Centre wants the academic session to begin from current year.
The classes will be conducted in a temporary campus for the time being and construction for permanent building will begin soon, sources said.
The locations of IIM in other States will be Visakhapatnam (Andhra Pradesh), Bodh Gaya (Bihar), Sirmaur (Himachal Pradesh), Nagpur (Maharashtra) and Amritsar (Punjab), the IT and Telecom Minister added.
In the 2014 budget, the Narendra Modi government had promised five new Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and six new IIMs.
The institutes were expected to be operational by the academic year 2015-2016. Ahead of last year's online registration for Common Admission Test for management courses, the CAT website had said the students could apply to the new institutes.
With the new ones coming up, the number of IIMs in the country will go up to 19. At present, there are IIMs at Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Calcutta, Lucknow, Kozhikode, Indore, Shillong, Tiruchirappalli, Raipur, Udaipur, Rohtak, Ranchi and Kashipur.