The University Grants Commission (UGC) has sought the centre’s clarification on whether the expert panel’s proposal, which increases the total number of institutes of eminence to 30, can be considered, reports The Indian Express.

The UGC has asked for a clarification following a Empowered Expert Committee’s (EEC) recommendation in December 2018 to accord the ‘Institutes of Eminence’ (IoE) tag to 19 more varsities which exceeded the original mandate of creating 20 such institutes.

As per the initial plan of the Union HRD Ministry, 10 public and 10 private institutes were to be selected for the IoE tag for them to be developed especially as world-class centres of learning.

Currently, IoE status has been approved for six varsities, namely IIT Bombay, IIT Delhi, IISc Bangalore, BITS Pilani, Manipal University and Jio University. The UGC’s deliberations on approving any further institutes have been in stasis due to the lack of clarity.

This is the second inconclusive meeting that the UGC has conducted on the new recommendations of the expert panel. The stipulated window of 15-days within which EEC’s recommendations are supposed to be forwarded to the centre already lapsed on 22 December.

Satya Bharti University to be developed by the Satya Bharti Foundation of Bharti Airtel group and Krea University in Andhra Pradesh are two institutes which have been recommended the IoE tag under the greenfield category in which Jio University is the sole varsity approved for the special status.

Some other private institutes whose names have been recommended are Amrit Vishwa Vidyapeetham in Coimbatore, VIT in Vellore, Jamia Hamdard University in New Delhi, Shiv Nadar University, Azim Premji University, Ashoka University, Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology in Bhubaneswar, etc.

IIT Madras, IIT Kharagpur, Jadhavpur University and Delhi University are some of the public universities which are being considered for the IoE tag.