Kapil Sibal says no to hike salary for IIT faculty

Kapil Sibal says no to hike salary for IIT facultyThe stand-off between Union Human Resource Development Ministry and the on-strike IIT faculty may further aggravate as MHRD, under Mr. Kapil Sibal, ruled out any possibility of hiking salaries for IIT Professors. However, the ministry urged the faculty to come to the table for resolving all issues such as institutional autonomy and wages.

Union HRD Minister Kapil Sibal said: "We will be too happy to discuss anything. I am ready to give them any autonomy they want as, anyway, the ministry has never interfered in their functioning. The issue is not of autonomy but of money and because we are funding them, they need to understand that there is a resource constraint."

Mr. Sibal added that India, being a developing country, cannot imitate developed countries for paying world-class salaries to their professors. He said that a per cent cap for the promotion of professors is a sort on incentive which would no longer remain if all faculty members were covered under it.

Meanwhile, the MHRD has scrapped the idea of setting up an Indian Institute of Management (IIM) in the state of Jammu and Kashmir. Instead, two central universities would be set up in the state under the Central University Act, 2009, to fulfill the regional aspirations of the state.