MoHUA | Constitutes committee to identify & designate institutions as Centres of Excellence

The Union Minister of Finance, in the budget 2022-23 speech, has announced that “for developing India specific knowledge in urban planning and design, and to deliver certified training in these areas, up to five existing academic institutions in different regions will be designated as centres of excellence. These centres will be provided endowment funds of Rs. 250 crores each.”

In order to steer the process of identifying and designating institutions as Centres of Excellence (CoEs), Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) has constituted a committee comprising of officials from MoHUA, Department of Higher Education (Ministry of Education), All India Council for Technical Education, NITI Aayog and leading domain experts. Terms of Reference of the aforementioned Committee are as under:

1. To identify the parameters for evaluating the institution’s capacity to undertake training and capacity building programmes.
2. To lay down the process for selection of institutions to be designated as CoEs.
3. To recommend five CoEs, one from each region, based on the challenge competition.
4. To suggest list of subjects on which India specific knowledge may be created and training and capacity building may be provided by the CoEs. An indicative list of subjects is given below:

1. Transit Oriented Development.
2. Transferrable Development Rights.
3. Micro level planning through Town Planning Schemes.
4. Micro level planning through Local Area Plan.
5. Urban water supply.
6. Sewage management, treatment and disposal.
7. Urban greening to mitigate heat island effect and tackle air pollution

Draft guidelines for designating the academic institutions as CoEs have been prepared and circulated among the members of the committee for their comments. Further steps envisaged are:

1. 1. Issuance of guidelines

(ii)         Inviting proposals from academic institutions

(iii)        Evaluation of proposals

(iv)         Final selection of five academic institutions for designating them as centres of excellence

This information was given by the Minister of State for Housing & Urban Affairs, Shri Kaushal Kishore, in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha today.