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G. Gurumurthy

COIMBATORE, July 3

THE 11-member board of governors of the Sardar Vallabhai Patel Institute of Textile Management, sponsored by the Ministry of Textiles (MoT), which is meeting here tomorrow, will discuss the building infrastructure needs of the new institute.

This talks will include the crucial issue of taking over the existing premises owned by the National Textile Corporation in which the institute is currently housed by the SVPITM.

Mr Shahnawaz Hussain, Union Textile Minister, who is the ex-officio chairman of the board of governors, is scheduled to chair the meet.

Indications are that the institute may seek transfer of the NTC's premises located on the arterial Avanashi Road and to start with, this could be done on `lease' basis for running the institute. Later on, the institute could buy the land and building on a price to be negotiated, according to sources close to the SVPITM.

At present, the SVPITM is informally operating from the NTC's staff training college situated at Peelamedu area. The transfer of the NTC property to the new institute, a brain-child of the Textile Ministry, which has sought to promote the SVPITM as a premier national level textile institute, is hanging fire for quite some time.

The institute wants to undertake infrastructure development work, especially creation of the teaching facility such as additional buildings required for academic block and hostel.

The SVPITM has occupied the NTC staff training college for the past three months ever since the Ministry cleared the proposal for establishing the institute here. In the absence of a decision on the status of the NTC property, confusion prevails on the role of the new institute vis-a-vis the existing NTC staff training college.

It is also not clear as to whether the college will be allowed to co-exist with the institute in the same premises or would be shifted to some other building The Peelamedu NTC staff training college premises is located on a six-acre site. Highly reliable sources told Business Line that a master plan prepared by the institute spelling out the building infrastructure, equipment such as computers and library would be presented at the meeting along with the academic programmes. There has been some delay in finalising the infrastructure budgeting.

Another issue to be discussed is the question of releasing funds for the running of the institute. Though the MoT has allocated Rs 4 crore towards the institute's capital cost, the Ministry is yet to release the funds.

Notwithstanding the ownership of the property, the institute is likely to launch its formal management course this month-end with a two-day course on `foreign exchange management' in textiles intended for the top-level executives at the levels of MDs/directors. The academic council of the institute, which is said to have finalised the short-term courses to be offered this year, has lined up a few set of subjects such as `raw material management', `taxation in textiles', `WTO and its implication on textiles' and `technical textiles'.

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