Agami Orissa's preparotory meeting on Feb 26th

Dear friends,

A preparotory meeting has been convened, for the burning issue of IIT in Orissa, on 26th afternoon ( 3pm to 5pm) at Faculty Club, VaniVihar. All members and also other interested persons, not belonging to Agami Odisha but strongly feel" Orissa has been cheated in IIT/IIEST issue, may participate in the meeting.

It has been tentatively decided by executive body meeting on 16th Feb'07 to hold the proposed Grand-Citizen convention on IIT issue on 8th March'07.

All subsequent course of action till getting IIT and upgrading UCE, Burla to IIEST, will be discussed and finalised on 26th Feb'07. This may please be considered as letter of invitation and remember we are fighting a cause, which will benifit all our future generation. Let us remind each other, our achievement in getting NISER in 2006 is because of our unity and action in 2005.

Thanking You,

Yours,
truly

Santosh Tripathy,
Suderson Das,
Madhusudan Das,
Pradeep Pradhan,
Pradipta nayak,
Lalit Mohan Pattnaik.

Point - Counterpoint

The grapevine is that some officials and politicians brought up the issue that since Orissa is being given NISER, the IIT should go to another state and as a result the initial decision to have a new IIT in Orissa, which was announced by the Union minister of state for HRD MAA Fatmi on 28-8-06, was changed.

If indeed such a logic was used, Orissans should illustrate the following faults with that logic:

1. NISER is funded by Dept. of Atomic Energy, not by MHRD. If one were to take into accounts other institutes that are not funded by MHRD with respect to Orissa then one must take into account this for the other states too.
   
1. For example, Bihar and Andhra Pradesh each will have a new NIPER (National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research) like institute that are being established by the Ministry of fertilizer and Chemicals. The other states where these institutes will be established are Gujarat and West Bengal.
2. Similarly, Indian Institute of Public Health have been proposed to be established in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, UP, Delhi, Punjab, Gujarat and West Bengal.
2. In 2006 two institutes of Andhra Pradesh (Osmania University College of engineerin and Andhra University College of Engineering) and three others (IT-BHU, CUSAT, BESU) were shortlisted for upgradation to IIT cousin status and were designated to be called IIEST (Indian Institute of Engineerin Science and Technology.)
3. Needless to say, we are happy when new institutes are established in Bihar, Andhra Pradesh and for that matter any other state of India. But why must Orissa be at the receiving end all the time? Why must MHRD and planning commissions buy faulty logic given by others to deprive Orissa of MHRD institutes ?