File photo of Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad.
The Cabinet has approved a plan to set up six more Indian Institutes of Management, or IIMs, Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said today.
The locations of the premier management institutes will be in Bodh Gaya (Bihar), Visakhapatnam (Andhra Pradesh), Sirmaur (Himachal Pradesh), Nagpur (Maharashtra), Sambalpur (Odisha) and Amritsar (Punjab), the IT and Telecom Minister added.
In the budget of 2014, the Narendra Modi government had promised five new institutes of technology or IITs, and six new IIMs.
The institutes were expected to be operational by the academic year 2015-2016 and ahead of last year's online registration for Common Admission Test for management courses, the CAT website had said the students could apply to the new institutes.
With the new institutes, the number of IIMs -- recognised across the world for its excellence -- will go up to 19.
At present, there are IIMs at Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Calcutta, Lucknow, Kozhikode, Indore, Shillong, Tiruchirappalli, Raipur, Udaipur, Rohtak, Ranchi and Kashipur.
Three of the states where the new IIMs will come up are heading for assembly elections within two years. In Bihar, the elections are due in September, in which the BJP is expecting to win big after its sterling performance in the Lok Sabha elections.
Elections in Punjab and Himachal Pradesh, a Congress-ruled state, will be held in 2017.
During his budget speech last year, Mr Jaitley had announced Jammu as one of the possible venues for the new IIMs, it has dropped out of the list.