Reliance’s Jio Institute which does not even exist gets government’s Institution of Eminence status
New Delhi, July 9 : Three private universities - BITS (Pilani), Manipal Academy of Higher Education and Jio Institute - were awarded the status of ‘institutions of eminence’ by the Centre on Monday.
Government institutions such as the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, and the Indian Institutes of Technology in Mumbai and Delhi were also awarded the status.
While IISc was ranked first in the all-India NIRF (National Institutional Ranking Framework) rankings of the government in 2018, IIT Bombay and Delhi were ranked third and fourth in the rankings, respectively.
IIT Madras, ranked second, IIT Kharagpur, ranked fifth, JNU, ranked sixth and IIT Kanpur, ranked seven, are not on the list. Manipal was ranked 18th in India by the NIRF and BITS Pilani was ranked 26th.
The surprise entry was Jio Institute, which was not found on the NIRF 2018.
Jio institute is proposed to be set up by Reliance Foundation, led by Nita Ambani. The foundation is the philanthropic arm of Reliance Industries, the largest private company in India. With this, the Jio Institute gets unprecedented freedom from the government’s higher education regulations from its very birth.
As per Government norms, an Institution of Eminence should offer interdisciplinary courses and conduct research in “areas of emerging technology”. It must have a mix of foreign and Indian students and faculty, with “student amenities comparable with that of globally reputed institutions”.
The Jio Institute has none of these. It does not even exist. Yet, it has been declared an “Institution of Eminence”, at par with the Indian Institutes of Technology at Delhi and Bombay, the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, the Birla Institute of Technology at Pilani, Rajasthan, which was set up in 1964, and the Manipal Academy of Higher Education, which began with Kasturba Medical College in 1953.
PTI had reported on March 11, 2018, that Reliance Foundation was planning to establish a university for cutting-edge research and innovation.
Union Minister of Human Resource Development Prakash Javadekar tweeted about the decision to select these six institutions: “Yet another landmark initiative of @narendramodi government. The #instituteofeminence are selected by the experts panel and today we are releasing list of six universities -- three each in public and private sector.”
The University Grants Commission (UGC) - which is going to be replaced by Higher Education Commission of India (HECI) - and the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), will lose the power to regulate these institutions, which are expected to break into the top 500 in the world in a decade.
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Man arrested with Rs 2.54-crore heroin in Mumbai
Mumbai (PTI): Police have arrested a man and seized over 500 grams of heroin worth Rs 2.54 crore in the illicit market from him in Mumbai, officials said on Friday.
The police's Anti-Narcotics Cell (ANC) made the drug seizure in Santacruz in the western suburbs. The operation was conducted by the Kandivali unit of the ANC on Thursday as part of a special crackdown against drug trafficking in the area, they said.
Acting on specific inputs, an ANC team conducted a raid in Santacruz (East) and intercepted a man. During a search, the team recovered 508 grams of high-grade heroin from his possession, an official said.
The seized contraband, a highly addictive, opioid drug derived from morphine, is estimated to be worth Rs 2.54 crore in the international market, he informed.
Following the seizure, a case was registered against the man under relevant sections of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, 1985, and he was formally placed under arrest in the early hours of Friday.
The police are currently investigating the source of the drug and trying to identify the intended recipients of the consignment, he said.
