GUWAHATI, June 8 � The Union government will soon organise a national-level conference to discuss the issue of including history, culture and other subjects related to the North-east in the national education curriculum.
Talking to reporters after attending the 17th convocation of the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, Union Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Zubin Irani said the Government of India would hold the national conference to seek opinions of all stakeholders on the issue and after consultations, would introduce matters related to the North-east in the national curriculum.
Irani, who held a meeting with State Education Minister Sarat Barkataky, also said that she had inquired about pending salary payment of teachers in the State. She said the State government had informed that salaries for April and May had been paid.
Irani said she asked Barkataky to inquire into the issue of pending salaries district-wise.
Earlier, delivering the convocation address, the HRD Minister said IIT Guwahati, in conjunction with IIT Kharagpur, would train 10,000 school teachers in the State in the fields of science and mathematics.
She said that the Central government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi was committed to development of the North-east and the HRD Ministry�s Ishan Vikas initiative was an effort in that direction.
The Minister also announced a reward of one lakh rupees to any faculty member of IIT Guwahati who would take the initiative to introduce a new course for promoting research. She said the award was intended to encourage the teachers who played a pivotal role in any educational system.
She thanked the IIT Guwahati for the institution�s support to the Ishan Vikas and Unnat Bharat Abhiyan.
At today�s ceremony, 124 PhD students, 578 undergraduate students and 415 post-graduate students received their degrees.
Delivering the director�s report, IIT Guwahati Director Prof Gautam Biswas said that the institute had made significant progress in various fields.
He said the number of PhD students had jumped to 1,531 this year from 1,310 last year.
Currently, 407 research projects are in progress with a total sanctioned value of Rs 250 crore. �In the year under report we received 82 new projects with a sanctioned value of Rs 50 crore,� he said.
IIT Guwahati also carried out 119 consultancy projects last year and received Rs 3.26 crore for the projects.
Biswas said that in the last one year, 763 papers were presented by IIT Guwahati faculty members in journals and another 487 papers were published in conference proceedings.