By Nidhi Jacob
On October 16, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, while addressing his first public event, post the announcement of the election dates in Chhattisgarh, claimed that educational institutes such as the National Institutes of Technology (NITs), Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT), Indian Institute of Management (IIM) and the All India Institute Of Medical Sciences were first built by the BJP government in India.
Shah's claims can be heard at 37:59 timestamp.
Chhattisgarh's 2023 Assembly elections will be held in two phases -- November 7 and November 17. The current Chief Minister Bhupesh Bhagel, was elected in the 5th Assembly election by the Indian National Congress (INC) in December 2018. Previously, Bharatiya Janata Party's Raman Singh served as Chief Minister from December 2003 to December 2018.
Fact-check
1. Claim: Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) was first built by the BJP government in India.
This claim is false.
The first IIT was established in May 1950 in Kharagpur in West Bengal, at the site of the Hijli Detention Camp, where the British had incarcerated political prisoners. The institution was named the " Indian Institute of Technology" before its formal inauguration on August 18, 1951, according to the Council of Indian Institute of Technology.
The first IIT was built during the INC's regime in 1950 and not by the BJP. Besides, the BJP was first formed in 1980 in India. According to the Council of Indian Institute of Technology, "Post Independence, it was Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru who pioneered establishing of the Indian Institutes of Technology to provide trained technical personnel of international class to the nation who would act as leaders in technology for the newly born independent India."
Within the first ten years of the launch of the first IIT, four more were set up: IIT Bombay (1958), IIT Madras (1959), IIT Kanpur (1959), and IIT Delhi (1961). In 1994, the sixth IIT was established in Guwahati. During Atal Bihari Vajpayee's term between 1998 and 2004, the University of Roorkee was converted to the seventh IIT in 2001.
Until 2013 there were 16 state-wise IITs in the country. Since 2014, the NDA government established six new IIT institutes and upgraded the Indian School of Mines (ISM), Dhanbad to an IIT.
In July 2016, the Lok Sabha passed the Institutes of Technology (Amendment) Bill, 2016 to facilitate the opening of these institutes in Palakkad (Kerala), Tirupati (Andhra Pradesh), Dhanbad (Jharkhand), Bhilai (Chattisgarh), Goa (Goa), Jammu (Jammu and Kashmir) and Dharwad (Karnataka). Of these, IIT Palakkad and IIT Tirupati were founded in 2015 while IIT Bhilai, IIT Goa, IIT Jammu, IIT Dharwad and IIT Dhanbad were founded in 2016 while operating through temporary campuses.
Overall, there are 23 IITs across the country.
2. Claim: The Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) was first built by the BJP government in India.
This claim needs context
The first IIIT was established in Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh during the prime ministership of Janata Dal's Inder Kumar Gujral in 1997. The beginning of Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management could be traced back to 1992, when MHRD (Presently Ministry of Education, Govt. of India) contemplated setting up advanced information systems such as IIMs and IITs in different locations of India. Subsequently in 1995, the union government, based on a report prepared by AICTE (All India Council for Technical Education) decided on establishing national centres focussed on IT and management training.
Post graduate diploma courses in Management and Information Technology began during Vajpayee's regime in 1998 and 5-year Dual Post Graduate programmes began in 2000. Initially started as IIITM, the institute's name was changed to Atal Bihari Vajpayee Indian Institute of Information Technology in 2002 to honour the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
Of the 25 Indian Institutes of Information Technology (IIITs) across the country currently, five are managed by the Ministry of Human Resource Development and twenty are run on a Not for profit Public-Private Partnership model.
While IIT's are run by the union government, IIIT's run on a public-private partnership. Another difference is that IITs provide a wider range of engineering, scientific, and technology programmes, while IIITs primarily focus on Information Technology and Computer Science.
3. Claim: Indian Institute of Management (IIM) was first built by the BJP government in India.
False.
The IIM was first established in 1961 in Ahmedabad and Kolkata under INCs rule. These institutes are "institutions of excellence, established with the objectives of imparting high quality management education and training, conducting research and providing consultancy services in the field of management to various sectors of the Indian economy."
Subsequently, IIMs were established in Bangalore (19730, Lucknow (1984), Indore (1996), Kozhikode (1997) and Shillong (2008). These institutions are known as the first generation IIMs.
The opening up of IIMs were conducted in three phases. Until 2007, only six IIMs (phase 1) had been established. Since then, seven IIMs (phase 2) were established by the UPA government between 2007 and 2011 and seven IIMs were opened between 2015 and 2016 by the NDA government. Overall, there are 20 IIMs in India.
4. Claim: All India Institute Of Medical Sciences was first built by the BJP government in India.
False
The first AIIMS was established in 1956 in Delhi under India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. It was set up under the All India Institute Medical Sciences Act, 1956 and was formed under the leadership of India's first health minister Amrit Kaur who was a part of the INC.
From 1956 to 2003 (47 years) there was no announcement or construction of AIIMS hospitals. In 2003, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government announced the Pradhan Mantri Swasthya Suraksha Yojana (PMSSY) scheme with the primary objective of establishing six new hospitals with modern facilities, like those available at AIIMS in Delhi, in backward stated in the following years. However, the NDA government lasted only nine months after the announcement, after which the UPA government came to power in 2004. Although the setting up of six new AIIMS was announced and sanctioned during NDA government's time, these hospitals were built during the UPA's regime.
Claim: National Institutes of Technology (NITs) were first built by the BJP government in India.
This claim needs additional context.
According to the Ministry of Education, "On the recommendations of Engineering Personnel Committee (EPC) set up by the Planning Commission in 1955, eight Regional Engineering Colleges (RECs) (two in each regions - east, west, north & south) were set up in early sixties as joint and co-operative ventures of the Central and State Governments concerned with a view to provide the required technical manpower for the industrial projects being contemplated during the 2nd Five-Year Plan (1956-61)."
This was when the INC was in power.
In 2003 (during Vajpayee's regime), the seventeen erstwhile Regional Engineering Colleges (RECs) were converted to National Institute of Technology (NITs) and taken over as fully funded institutes of the Central Government and granted deemed university status.
Overall, there are 31 NITs currently.
