Government appoints directors to 11 NITs

NV Ramana Rao, currently the Rector of Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University in Hyderabad, is the new head of NIT in Warangal. A teacher of civil engineering, Rao has a Bachelors degree in engineering from Osmania University, M.Tech from IIT Delhi and Ph.D from the UK. His research interests include structural design.

The appointments to NIT Warangal and NIT Durgapur were delayed because of the cabinet reshuffle in July 2016, when Smriti Irani was shifted to Textile Ministry and Prakash Javadekar took over as her successor at HRD Ministry. The ministry had scrapped the panel of names finalised during Irani’s term as they were found unsuitable and the two posts were advertised again.

While Rajiv Kumar Garg, a professor of industrial and production engineering at NIT Jalandhar, will now head NIT Arunachal Pradesh, Professor Sivaji Bandyopadhyay from the department of computer science engineering at Jadavpur University in Kolkata is the new director of NIT Silchar.

NIT Raipur has got its new head from within the institute. AM Rawani, a teacher of mechanical engineering, has been appointed here. Rakesh Sehgal from NIT Hamirpur in Himachal Pradesh is the director of NIT Srinagar, which witnessed students protests in April last year, after some students from the Valley and some from outside the state clashed following India’s semi-final loss to West Indies in the T-20 World Cup.

Karunesh Kumar Shukla from MNIT in Allahabad is going to head NIT Jamshedpur, Pradip Kumar Jain from IIT (BHU) is the new director of NIT Patna, Shyam Lal Soni of NIT Jaipur will head NIT Uttarakhand, retired scientist S Venugopal has been appointed to NIT Nagaland and Harish Kumar Sharma, professor at SLIET in Punjab, is the new director of NIT Agartala.