HRD Minister chairs 12th meeting of National Institute of Technology, Science Education and Research

New Delhi, September 26 : Union HRD Minister Shri Ramesh Pokhriyal 'Nishank' chaired the 12th Meeting of National Institute of Technology, Science Education and Research (NITSER) in New Delhi on September 25. The meeting was attended by Directors of the National Institutes of Technology (NITs) and Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology, Shibpur and Chairpersons of the Board of Governors of these Institutes.

Major points in the agenda that were discussed included the launch of a recruitment drive for more than 2200 faculty positions in the institutes by December 2019 and the acceptance of tuition fee waiver for SC/ST and PH students applying for M.Tech. In addition, enhancing the academic performance and achieving higher educational standards were also discussed in detail. Apart from faculty recruitment, service conditions, recruitment rules, well being of students and staff, reservation issues, tuition fees were also discussed at the meeting. Reports of CSAB-2018 & 2019, CCMT-2018 & 2019, DASA-2017 & 2018 were looked at by the members.

Other issues discussed were entrepreneurship development, aligning engineering education with emerging trends, identifying thrust areas, research productivity. Implementation of schemes like Plastic free Campaign, Fit India Movement, Jal Shakti Abhiyan and One student, One Tree, at Institution level was agreed upon.

Improvement of rankings of the NITs & IIEST and quarterly meetings for proper evaluation of each NIT were other items on the agenda that were discussed. The report of the "NIT Think Tank Committee", was the basis for this discussion.

Following important decisions were taken in the Council meeting:

• A recruitment drive to fill up approximately 2200 faculty positions by December, 2019 was to be launched immediately.

• Implementation of Tenure Track System for Faculty Recruitment was approved in priciple after further examination of the issues highlighted by some of the institutes.

• Sustainable development to be looked at areas like earthquake resistant structures; mapping of available groundwater; artificial intelligence; research in ethics in technology; research in artificial intelligence and robotics for humanities; developing technologies for recycling of waste for useful applications; cyber security for sustained efforts & focus; climate disaster resilience, urban risk reduction; aerospace; resilience in socio ecological systems; blockchain technology in conventional and non-conventional communication media; digital manufacturing and IIOT; solar thermal etc.

• Recommendations of the Oversight committee were accepted with regard to anomalies in the recruitment rules of faculty.

• Acceptance of tuition fee waiver scheme for SC/ST/PH M.Tech. student in NITs & IIEST.