The exact locations will be decided after the state governments identify 500 acres of contiguous land for setting up the campus.

Today’s announcement comes almost six months after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh asked the HRD Ministry to finalise the locations of the new IITs, IIMs and central universities that are a part of the eleventh Five-Year Plan. As per the Plan, eight new IITs and seven IIMs will be set up. The government had earlier announced four new IITs in Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, Bihar and Himachal Pradesh, and an IIM at Shillong.

Speaking to newspersons today, Union HRD Minister Arjun Singh said the Prime Minister had approved the location of the new institutes. The government also proposes to convert the Institute of Technology at the Banaras Hindu University into an IIT, he said.

Besides new IITs and IIMs, 14 world-class central universities will be set up in Pune, Kolkata, Coimbatore, Mysore, Visakhapatnam, Gandhinagar, Jaipur, Patna, Bhopal, Kochi, Amritsar, Bhubaneswar, Greater Noida and Guwahati.

Moreover, 16 central universities will be set up in states which do not have one at present. These are Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Jammu and Kashmir, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Rajasthan and Goa.

In three states, the existing state universities will be taken over by the Centre and converted into central universities. These are: Dr Hari Singh Gaur University at Sagar in Madhya Pradesh, Guru Ghasidas University at Bilaspur in Chhattisgarh and Goa University.

Singh said the locations of all the new institutes have been decided keeping in mind the connectivity and the infrastructure facilities. Asked if the decision was based on “political considerations”, Singh replied: “The government has decided on them after taking everything into consideration.”

Meanwhile, with the issue of OBC quota in premier institutions like the IITs and IIMs stuck in the Supreme Court, Singh hoped for a positive outcome. “Please pray for it,” he said, when asked whether the OBC reservation would come into force from the coming academic session. The apex court has reserved its verdict on the issue.

“We should be able to convince the Supreme Court on what India wants, and efforts in this regard have to be pursued with dedication,” he said.