Two committees constituted by the Centre would visit Kurnool, Tirupati, Visakhapatnam and West Godavari in the next few days to finalise sites for the setting up IIIT, NIT, IIM, IIT and another institution.

This was disclosed on Tuesday by HRD Minister Ganta Srinivas Rao while giving details of his department’s achievements in the last 100 days. He said the directors of IIT, Chennai and IIT Hyderabad were members of one committee while Praveen Prakash, joint secretary, Union Ministry of HRD was the member convenor for another panel. The committees would visit the places on September 18 and 19.

An IIM is proposed to be established at Visakhapatnam, while an NIT in West Godavari district. An IIIT at Kurnool, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research at Tirupati and an IIT at Merlapaka, also near Tirupati.

He said the State government would soon issue a notification on increasing the retirement age from 60 to 62 years for employees of universities. The government was also contemplating filing either a review petition or curative petition in the Supreme Court in connection with the conduct of second counselling for EAMCET students of engineering stream.

The government would study all aspects before taking any decision in regard to allowing private universities. He said a team would visit Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and Punjab to study how such universities were operating there. The government was not in a hurry and the aim was to bring in more competition.

TH