After a prolonged delay, construction work on the IIT Bhubaneswar campus has finally gained momentum, brightening prospects of shifting the institute to its permanent address at Argul on the outskirts of the city soon.
The institute is, at present, functioning from five scattered locations in a 10-km radius.
A boys’ hostel with 800 capacity, girls hostel (200), a guest house having 45 rooms and staff quarters building (50 flats), shopping complex are ready for possession. A block of classrooms is nearly ready and is likely to be completed by early October.
The boundary wall on the 950-acre campus is almost complete except for around 2 km, which was delayed for a court case. Work on this stretch is going on fast. A grid to supply power to the campus has already been commissioned though permanent water supply from Naraj barrage will take at least a few more months.
The master plan of the campus has been designed to accommodate 10,000 students, 1,000 faculty members, 1,100 non-teaching employees besides 1,000 outsourced support staff. The Union government had approved construction of 2,21,000 square meters of covered area (63,000 square meters for the academic complex and 1,58,000 square meters for residential complex) in the first phase for which the government has already released Rs 450 crore.
Courtesy: Times of India