MoHUA constitutes committee to identify and designate institutions as Centres of Excellence
The Union Minister of Finance, in the budget 2022-23 speech, has
announced that “for developing India specific knowledge in urban planning and
design, and to deliver certified training in these areas, up to five existing
academic institutions in different regions will be designated as centres of
excellence. These centres will be provided endowment funds of Rs 250 crores
each.”
In order to steer the process of identifying and designating
institutions as Centres of Excellence (CoEs), Ministry of Housing and Urban
Affairs (MoHUA) has constituted a committee comprising of officials from MoHUA,
Department of Higher Education (Ministry of Education), All India Council for
Technical Education, NITI Aayog and leading domain experts. Terms of Reference
of the aforementioned Committee are as under:
- To identify the parameters for evaluating the
institution’s capacity to undertake training and capacity building
programmes.
- To lay down the process for selection of
institutions to be designated as CoEs.
- To recommend five CoEs, one from each region,
based on the challenge competition.
- To suggest list of subjects on which India
specific knowledge may be created and training and capacity building may
be provided by the CoEs. An indicative list of subjects is given below:
- Transit Oriented Development.
- Transferrable Development Rights.
- Micro level planning through Town Planning
Schemes.
- Micro level planning through Local Area Plan.
- Urban water supply.
- Sewage management, treatment and disposal.
- Urban greening to mitigate heat island effect
and tackle air pollution
Draft guidelines for designating the academic institutions as CoEs have
been prepared and circulated among the members of the committee for their
comments. Further steps envisaged are:
- Issuance of guidelines
(ii)
Inviting proposals from academic
institutions
(iii)
Evaluation of proposals
(iv)
Final selection of five academic institutions for designating them as centres
of excellence
This information was given by the Minister of State for Housing &
Urban Affairs, Shri Kaushal Kishore, in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha
today.