Former RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan backed Krea University is set to get the ‘Institute of Eminence’ tag as per the recommendation of Ministry of Human Resource Development (HRD). The liberal arts institute will commence its classes for its undergraduate classes in August 2019 for a batch of 125 students in the first batch. Industrialists Anand Mahindra, Kiran Mazumdar Shaw and Sajjan Jindal are three other corporate backers for Krea University which is coming up in Sricity in Andhra Pradesh.
Other universities recommended for the tag include Azim Premji University in Karnataka, Shiv Nadar University in Uttar Pradesh, Haryana based O.P. Jindal Global University, Satya Bharti University and Ashoka University and Tamil Nadu’s Vellore Institute of Technology.
Earlier this year, the HRD Ministry had awarded the Institute of Eminence tag to 3 public institutes IIT-Bombay, IIT-Delhi and IISC-Bangalore and 3 private institutes Jio Institute by Reliance Foundation, Manipal Academy of Higher Education and BITS Pilani. The government had then received a lot of backlash for awarding the Institute of Eminence tag to a yet to be operational Jio Institute.
The new list, which features other institutes like Banaras Hindu University and Panjab University does not have a single IIT and other prominent institutes like JNU.
When the earlier list was announced in July this year, few politicians and so-called journalists had tried to spread false information and narrative that Jio Institute which was still not functional, would be given Rs. 1,000 crore of public money and termed it ‘corruption’ and used it to mock the Institute of Eminence tag.
https://twitter.com/churumuri/status/1016523888086351872?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
However, most are silent on yet-to-be-operational Krea University being awarded the ‘Institute of Eminence’ tag.