Orissa is poised to become the knowledge and education hub of eastern India with a number of central institutions and private universities coming up in the state, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik has said.
Work for setting up one engineering college each at Bhawanipatna in Kalahandi and Berhampur in Ganjam district is already in progress, while one IIT, one IIIT (Indian Institute of Information Technology) and one unit of NISER has already come up, Patnaik said in the state capital yesterday.
The chief minister, who was here to inaugurate a building of Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneswar (XIMB), said an agriculture college would also come up at Bhawanipatna and the state's oldest engineering college at Burla will get the status of a deemed university.
On the technical education front, Patnaik said an Industrial Training Institute (ITI) would be set up in each of the blocks through a public-private-partnership (PPP) mode.
While about 62,000 students were getting ITI education, the state has proposed to impart technical education to over one lakh.
Lauding XIMB's contribution towards higher education in the state, he hoped the institute would also impart skills in agriculture and industry sectors.