Dharwad: The Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT), sanctioned for Dharwad, is scheduled to start functioning from a temporary campus soon.
Government has identified 61.06 acres of land near Tadasinakoppa village off Dharwad for establishment of a permanent campus for IIIT.
Minister S.R. Patil also requested the Central Government to declare Karnataka as a ‘Digital State’. The Centre should use Karnataka as a model to launch an IT revolution in administration in other states, he said.
Karnataka’s contributes one-third – Rs 1.8 lakh crore – of the country’s revenue earned through IT exports. The state’s revenue earned through IT exports is expected to increase to Rs 4 lakh-crore by 2020.
The IIIT-Dharwad, is part of the union government’s proposal to set up 20 new IIITs in different parts of the country and the partners in project would be the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), Government of India, State Governments and Industry.
According to Mr Patil the capital cost of each IIIT is tentatively estimated at Rs. 128 crore to be contributed to in the ratio of 50:35:15 by the Central Government (Rs. 64 crore), State Government (Rs. 45 crore) and the Industry (Rs. 19 crore) respectively.
The State Government has already given its commitment towards providing 50 to 100 acres of contiguous land, free of cost and its share of capital expenditure of Rs. 45 crore, he has said. It might be recalled that although the Hubli branch of IIIT-Bangalore has been set up at Hubli IT Park, it is offering only Finishing School Programmes as of now.
