Media students may soon apply to IIMC university

To take forward prime minister Narendra Modi’s plan to integrate all government media institutes, a high-level meeting was held in the ministry of information and broadcasting on Monday morning. The possibility of establishing a communication university was discussed.

Held for over an hour at Shastri Bhawan, the meeting was chaired by information and broadcasting ministry secretary Bimal Julka and had joint secretary Anurag Srivastava, participants from Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC) as well as Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT), said sources.

In the first-ever meeting with secretaries of various ministries last month, Modi had asked them to ‘take decisions’ which he would back. When Julka met him during this interaction, Modi after seeing his presentation had recommended the idea of starting an integrated ‘communication university’ which would have all IIMCs under it. This university would focus on standardising media courses all over the country.

As per earlier reports, IIMC was to be included in the category of IITs and AIIMS with the government thinking of granting it the status of ‘national importance’, thereby also giving it degree-granting powers. Now, with the idea of a communication university in the pipeline, that won’t be necessary. Professors and members from IIMC and IITs came up with different views on Monday meeting.

‘These were preliminary discussions on the issue. It is a policy matter and needs to be discussed in depth. There were various views aired in the meeting and we need to look at all sides. We need to analyse what lies ahead,’ said a source who was present at this meeting.

Former information and broadcasting minister and Congress leader Manish Tewari told Millennium Post: ‘This idea was mooted by the United Progressive Alliance government. But we have to see how they (the Modi government) fleshes it out. I have to see the proposal before commenting on it.’