Union Budget 2019: IITs, IISERs and IISc get hike in allocation, IIMs' allocation snipped by RS 590 cr

The 23 IITs in the country will receive Rs 6409.95 crore this financial year while IISERs and IISc Bengaluru will get Rs 899.22 crore and Rs 573.01 crore respectively, said the Union Budget 2019 presented by the newly-appointed Finance Minister, Nirmala Sitharaman. The budget earmarked Rs 94,853.64 crore for the education sector for the fiscal year 2019-20, an 11.58 per cent increase from the 2018-19 budget.

IITs are set to receive a support grant of Rs 6329.95 crore but nothing has been set aside for new IITs. IIT Hyderabad though will receive Rs 80 crore this year. The budget allocated this time is Rs 83 crore more than what was allocated last year. A total of Rs 899.22 crore has been allocated as budget expenditure for the IISERs this year which is a whopping 38 per cent more than what Jaitley had earmarked in 2018-19 (Rs 689 crore). The year before that, in 2017-18, the government had spent Rs 780.02 crore on the IISERs across the country.

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While Jaitley's budget had allocated Rs 455 crore for the IISc, Sitharaman bumped it up by 25 per cent to Rs 573.01 crore this year. But not all eminent institutes of the country had such a good fortune. IIMs, India's premier management institutes, saw a drop of Rs 590.47 crore in planned expenditure this year. Even though last year's allocation was Rs 1036 crore the revised estimate shows only Rs 372 crore being spent in 2018-19.

The first woman to take charge of the Finance Ministry full-time, Sitharaman said her government aims to transform the archaic education system in India. "The Government will bring in a New National Education Policy to transform India’s higher education system to one of the global best education systems. The new Policy proposes major changes in both school and higher education among others, better Governance systems and brings greater focus on research and innovation," she said.

"An amount of Rs 400 crore has been provided under the head, 'World Class Institutions', for FY 2019-20, more than three times the revised estimates for the previous year. India has the potential to become a hub of higher education. I, therefore, propose to start a programme, ‘Study in India’, that will focus on bringing foreign students to study in our higher educational institutions.," she added. But her proposal seems to have been taking physical shape already. The budget document shows Rs 50 crore being already spent for Study In India and Rs 65 crore more earmarked for this year.