Chitradurga will house second IISc campus; Anantpur third

The proposed campus of India’s number one science school at Anantpur in Andhra Pradesh is likely to be the third campus, not the second, as mentioned by Union minister for human resources development Kapil Sibal last week, the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) clarified on Monday.

“The campus coming up at Chitradurga, is the second one,” said the public relations officer of IISc, V Tilagam. The proposal of a campus at Anantpur in Andhra Pradesh was still in the initial stages, she said. Hence it was likely to be the third one, she added.

A letter from Sibal to the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh mooted the idea of extending the presence of IISc to the neighbouring state. He had mentioned in the letter that the formalities like Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for taking up land and time-frame for building basic infrastructure were being worked out.
Media reports of a second IISc campus in Andhra Pradesh even prompted chief minister BS Yeddyurappa to clarify that the 2,000-acre second campus at Chitradurga district in Kundapur village was not being moved out to Anantpur. Sources at IISc here said that the institute had been receiving requests from the central and Andhra Pradesh governments to set up a campus for three years now.

“Since there was an enthusiastic request from the governments, a team from IISc visited two sites in Anantpur. That does not mean we are going to set up a campus anytime soon. We took 100 years to build IISc to what it is today. Expansion is no child’s play,” said a top scientist.

At Chitradurga campus, the 2,000-acre land to house the second has been taken over by the IISc.  “Work is in full swing,” the scientist said.

Recent reports have revealed that the IISc plans the construction of a ‘synchrotron’ — a large and high-energy electron-accelerator, which is used as a tool in several streams of scientific research — at the Chitradurga campus.