After more than a year of correspondence between the Indian Institute of Technology,Delhi (IIT-D),and the Haryana government,the latter has finally agreed in principle to provide land for a second extension campus in Jhajjar. Registrar of IIT-D Rakesh Kumar told Newsline that the proposal to set up a second campus in Haryana is at an advanced stage and the institute is likely to get possession of the land very soon. IIT-D had been pushing for this second extension at Jhajjar,after obtaining land for the first one in Sonepat. The Jhajjar campus,about 100 acres in area,is being envisaged as IITs research campus while the one in Sonepat will be used for academic expansion. According to Kumar,a committee has been appointed to look into the activities planned for the Sonepat campus. The site will include a science and technology park,a faculty development centre and a high performance computing centre, he said. Former director of IIT-D Surendra Prasad had announced during the institutes Golden Jubilee celebrations in August 2011 that the Haryana government had offered 100 acres of land free of cost to IIT-Delhi for a second campus. In April 2012,a six-member team comprising director of IIT-D R K Shevgaonkar,deputy director M Balakrishnan and Prasad,had visited three sites around Jhajjar and had zeroed in on a site relatively close to Gurgaon and next to AIIMSs extension campus. Shevgaonkar had written to the Haryana government in December 2012 for possession of the Sonepat campus. On March 19,the Haryana government had handed the possession of a 50-acre plot in Sonepats Rajiv Gandhi Educational City to IIT-D. IIT had then asked for a second extension campus at Jhajjar to build a research facility,as the current 250-acre campus is not not enough for the research needs of the institute,officials said.
