Kolkata :

Bengal’s first IIIT, a central university catering to IT engineering, will start functioning from July onwards, announced state IT minister Amit Mitra at the Assembly on Tuesday.

While it will start functioning from temporary premises this year, by the next academic session, the university will shift to its own campus spreading over 50 acres at Kalyani. The autonomous university will be run by the Union HRD ministry but will have partial state and private funding also.

The director of Bengal Engineering and Science University (Besu), that has just been upgraded to IIEST, will act as the mentor of IIIT for now. The university will start functioning with a B Tech course in IT this year. Next year, it will have B Tech courses in electronics and communication and computer science engineering. From 2016-17, M Tech courses will start here and from 2017-18, PhD will be introduced, Mitra said while detailing out plans for the IIIT.

“A total Rs 128 crore will be invested to set up the IIIT,” he said, adding that there are 10 such universities in the country, but it is the state’s first and should provide a lot of impetus to IT education.

Answering questions placed in the House over the progress that the IT sector has made in the state, Mitra said the exports in IT sector stood at

Rs 11200 crore has been exported in the IT sector in the last financial year. “At the time when Trinamool formed the government, this figure was at Rs 8335 crore and hence there has been a growth of 44%. A total of 1.30 lakh people are employed in the IT sector presently, a jump from 90,000 during the Left rule,” he added.

When asked if this growth was limited only to the BPO sector, Mitra said, “Apart from jobs that have been outsourced to us from foreign companies, there has been a lot of insourcing and indigenous growth too because of a boom in the e-governance.”

“The state government has taken a policy decision about focusing on companies that deal in animation, gaming and special effects. These companies are a mix of creativity and IT. Our children are immensely talented and creative when it comes to having a flair for animation. We need to tap that,” Mitra said. He said 13 IT parks are coming up across the state, in Durgapur, Asansol, Rajarhat, Siliguri, Purulia, Kharagpur, Bolpur, Haldia, Kalyani, Howrah, Malda, Krishnagar and Borjora.

source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / Home> City> Kolkata / TNN / June 25th, 2014