The Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur (IIT Kharagpur or IIT-KGP) is a public technical and research university established by the government of India in 1951.
It is the first of the IITs to be established and is recognised as an Institute of National Importance.
In 2019 it was awarded the status of Institute of Eminence by the government of India.
The institute was initially established to train scientists and engineers after India attained independence in 1947.
However, over the years, the institute's academic capabilities diversified with offerings in management, law, architecture, humanities, etc. IIT Kharagpur has an 8.5 square kilometres (2,100 acres) campus and has about 22,000 residents.
The students and alumni of IIT Kharagpur are informally referred to as KGPians.
Key Description:
Motto: योगः कर्मसु कौशलम् (Sanskrit)
Motto in English: Excellence in action is Yoga
Type: Public Technical university
Established: 1951; 69 years ago
Academic Affiliations: Institute of National Importance
Chairman: Sanjiv Goenka
Director: Virendra Kumar Tewari
Academic staff: 781
Administrative staff: 1,500
Students: 11,794
Undergraduates: 2,769
Postgraduates: 6,210
Doctoral Students: 2,815
Location: Kharagpur, West Bengal, India
Campus: Urban 2,150 acres (8.7 km2)
Nickname: IITians, KGPians
Website www.iitkgp.ac.in
Social Network: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn
History of
Foundation:
In 1946, a committee by Sir Jogendra Singh, Member of Viceroy's executive council, to consider the creation of higher technical institutions "for post-World War II industrial development of India".
This was followed by the creation of a 22-member committee headed by Nalini Ranjan Sarkar. In its interim report, the Sarkar Committee recommended the establishment of higher technical institutions in India, along the lines of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and consulting from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign along with affiliated secondary institutions.
The report urged that work should start with the speedy establishment of major institutions in the four-quarters of the country with the ones in the east and the west to be set up immediately.
On the grounds that West Bengal had the highest concentration of industries at the time, Bidhan Chandra Roy, the Chief Minister of West Bengal, persuaded Jawaharlal Nehru (India's first prime minister) to establish the first institute in West Bengal.
The first Indian Institute of Technology was thus established in May 1950 as the Eastern Higher Technical Institute. It was located in Esplanade East, Calcutta, and in September 1950 shifted to its permanent campus at Hijli, Kharagpur 120 kilometres south-west of Kolkata (formerly called Calcutta). Hijli had been used as a detention camp during the British colonial rule in India, to keep Indian freedom fighters captive.
IIT Kharagpur is the 3rd oldest technical institute in the West Bengal state after Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology Shibpur (1856) and Jadavpur University (established as Bengal technical institute in 1906) When the first session started in August 1951, there were 224 students and 42 teachers in the ten departments of the institute.
The classrooms, laboratories and the administrative office were housed in the historic building of the Hijli Detention Camp (now known as Shaheed Bhawan), where political revolutionaries were imprisoned during the British rule.
The office building had served as the headquarters of the Bomber Command of the U.S. 20th Air Force during World War II.
Campus
IIT Kharagpur is located 120 kilometres (75 mi) west of Kolkata. The campus is located five kilometres away from Kharagpur Railway Station in West Midnapore district. The layout of the present campus and the design of the buildings were carried out by a group of engineers and architects under the guidance of Werner M. Moser, a Swiss architect.
The 2,100-acre (8.5 km2) campus is residence to about 22,000 inhabitants. In 2015, IIT Kharagpur had about 605 faculty members, 1,933 employees and approximately 10,010 students living on the campus. The campus has a total of 55 kilometres (34 miles) of roadways. The Institute plans to go Green by 2020.
The 22 student hostels are located on either side of Scholars Avenue, which extends from the institute gate to the B. C. Roy Technology Hospital. The three earliest halls—Patel, Azad, and Nehru—together constitute the PAN loop or Old Campus, which is located just next to Scholar's Avenue. There are ten hostels for undergraduate male students (MMM, LBS, RP, RK, MS, LLR, HJB, Patel, Azad and Nehru) and two for undergraduate female students (SN/IG and MT).
There are a few post-graduate students' hostels including four for women(RLB, Gokhle, Nivedita and SAM) and hostels for research scholars (BCR, VS, BRH and JCB) and a separate hostel for scholars from the armed forces. The Jnan Ghosh stadium and Tata Sports Complex host large-scale sports competitions.
The Tagore Open Air Theatre has a capacity of 6,000 people, and is used to host cultural programs. The Science and Technology Entrepreneurs' Park (STEP) provides infrastructure facilities to alumni who want to become entrepreneurs but lack infrastructure to start their own corporation.
In addition to the main campus at Kharagpur, the institute has an extension centre at Kolkata to provide venues for continuing education programmes, distance learning courses, and guesthouse accommodation. The institute plans to expand the Kolkata extension centre at Rajarhat, and use it to offer full-time undergraduate and postgraduate courses from the 2008 session onwards.
The 10-acre (40,000 m2) Rajarhat campus will house 2,500 students, and will eventually expand to 250 acres (1.0 km2). The institute's plan for a similar branch campus of 200 acres (0.81 km2) in Bhubaneswar was scrapped following rejection by the Union Human Resource and Development ministry.
The Ministry of human resource development on 5 September 2019 awarded ''Institute of Eminence(IoE)'' status to IIT Kharagpur along with four public institution in India, which will enable to get full autonomy and special incentives.
Academics
Admission to most undergraduate and postgraduate courses in IIT Kharagpur is granted through written entrance examinations. Admissions to M.S.(by Research) and PhD programmes are based on written tests followed by personal interviews.
Admission to undergraduate programmes in all IITs was tied to the Indian Institute of Technology Joint Entrance Examination (IIT-JEE). Candidates who qualify for admission through IIT-JEE used to apply for admission in four-year BTech (Bachelor of Technology), five-year BArch degree, five-year Dual Degree (Integrated Bachelor of Technology and Master of Technology) and five-year integrated MSc (Master of Sciences) courses at IIT Kharagpur. Starting from 2013, admission was done on the basis of two exams; JEE Mains and JEE Advance. Students who qualified for JEE Mains got the opportunity to appear for JEE Advance and scores of this exams are considered for the admission into IITs. The admissions to postgraduate programmes (MTech) are made primarily through the Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE). Other postgraduate entrance exams include Joint Admission to MSc (JAM) for MSc, and Common Admission Test (CAT) conducted by IIMs for management studies.
15% of the seats are reserved for students belonging to Scheduled Castes (SC) and 7.5% for Scheduled Tribes (ST). As of 2008, 27% separate reservation exists for the Other Backward Classes.
IIT Kharagpur is a member of LAOTSE, a network of universities in Europe and Asia exchanging students and senior scholars.
Undergraduate Education: IIT Kharagpur offers degrees as part of its undergraduate programmes. They include Bachelor of Technology (BTech.Hons), Bachelor of Architecture (BArch) and the 5-year integrated Master of Science. The BTech degree is the most common undergraduate degree in IIT Kharagpur in terms of student enrolment. It is based on a four-year programme with eight semesters.
Postgraduate And Doctoral Education: IIT Kharagpur offers postgraduate programmes including Master of Technology (MTech), Master of Business Administration (MBA), and Master of Sciences (MSc). Some specialised post graduate programmes offered by IIT Kharagpur include Master of Human Resource Management (MHRM), Postgraduate Diploma in Information Technology (PGDIT), Master in Medical Science and Technology (MMST), Master of City Planning (MCP), LL.B in Intellectual Property Law (LL.B Honors in IP Law), and Postgraduate Diploma in Maritime Operation and Management (PGDMOM).
The institute offers the Doctor of Philosophy degree (PhD) as part of its doctoral education programme. The doctoral scholars are given a topic by the professor, or work on the consultancy projects sponsored by industry.
The duration of the programme is usually unspecified and depends on the discipline. PhD scholars submit a dissertation as well as conduct an oral defence of their thesis. Teaching assistantships (TA) and research assistantships (RA) are provided based on the scholar's academic profile. IIT Kharagpur offers an M.S. (by research) programme; the MTech and M.S. being similar to the US universities' non-thesis (course-based) and thesis (research-based) master programmes respectively.
Sponsored Research:
The institute received 171 research revenue worth ₹417 million (US$5.8 million)—and 130 consultancy projects in the 2005–06 session. The institute transferred 15 technologies to industry during the same session. The institute has filed 125 patents and 25 of them have been granted. This does not include patents obtained by individual professors or students. During the same session, the value of the international projects was ₹9.9 million (US$140,000), and the revenue from transferred technologies was about ₹2.5 million (US$35,000). The institute earned ₹520 million (US$7.3 million) from research projects in the 2005–06 session.
Major sponsors for research include the Indian Ordnance Factories, Indian National Science Academy, Ministry of Human Resource and Development, Defence Research and Development Organisation, Microsoft Corporation, Department of Science and Technology, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (India) and Indian Space Research Organisation. IIT Kharagpur has had a cell known as the SRIC (Sponsored Research and Industrial Consultancy) cell since 1982. It handles sponsored research projects and industrial consultancy assignments, and has the infrastructure to simultaneously administer 600 R&D projects.
Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research has entered into a collaboration with IIT Kharagpur to carry out research for the design and development of Fast Breeder Reactors (FBRs). This is a major development that will boost the second stage of India's nuclear power programme.
Academic Units:
Departments
- Aerospace Engineering
- Agricultural & Food Engineering
- Architecture & Regional Planning
- Biotechnology
- Chemical Engineering
- Chemistry
- Civil Engineering
- Computer Science & Engineering
- Electrical Engineering
- Electronics & Electrical Communication Engineering
- Geology & Geophysics
- Humanities & Social Sciences
- Industrial & Systems Engineering
- Mathematics
- Mechanical Engineering
- Metallurgical & Materials Engineering
- Mining Engineering
- Ocean Engineering & Naval Architecture
- Physics
- Centres
- Rubber Technology
- Steel Technology Centre
- Reliability Engineering
- Cryogenic Engineering
- Materials Science
- Oceans, Rivers, Atmosphere and Land Sciences
- Rural Development Centre
- Advanced Technology Development Centre
- Centre for Educational Technology
- Rekhi Centre for Science of Happiness
- Deysarkar Centre Excellence in Petroleum Engineering
- AI Centre of Excellence
Schools
- School of Medical Science and Technology
- G S Sanyal School of Telecommunications
- Rajendra Mishra School of Engineering Entrepreneurship
- Rajiv Gandhi School of Intellectual Property Law
- Ranbir and Chitra Gupta School of Infrastructure Design and
- Management
- Medical Science & Technology
- School of Water Resources
- Vinod Gupta School of Management
Ranking:
Internationally, IIT Kharagpur was ranked 281 in the QS World University Rankings of 2020, 53 in Asia and 23 among BRICS nations. It was ranked 401–500 in the world by the Times Higher Education World University Rankings of 2020, 55 in the Emerging Economies University Rankings of 2019 and 76 in Asia in 2019.
In India, IIT Kharagpur ranked 2nd among government engineering colleges by India Today in 2018, 4th among engineering colleges by Outlook India in 2019 and 3rd among engineering colleges by The Week in 2018, and fourth among engineering colleges by the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) in 2019, which also ranked it fifth overall. In the 2020 NIRF ranking released on June 11, 2020, IIT Kharagpur was ranked in the fifth position in the Engineering category as well as the Overall category.
The architecture department was ranked first among all architecture colleges in India by NIRF in 2019, Rajiv Gandhi School of Intellectual Property Law was ranked fourth among law schools and Vinod Gupta School of Management (VGSoM) was ranked sixth among management schools. VGSoM was also ranked 22 by Business Today's "India's best B-schools 2019".
In the 2020 NIRF Rankings released on June 11, 2020, IIT Kharagpur was placed in the 5th position among Management schools