No plan to rename IIT Madras as IIT Chennai: Dharmendra Pradhan

Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan has ruled out any proposal to rename the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras, as IIT Chennai. He said this in response to a written question in the monsoon session of the Lok Sabha. 

“Whether the Union Government has received any proposal from any educational institution/individual or any organisations to change the name of IIT Madras into IIT Chennai? If so, the details thereof; and the action taken/being taken by the Union Government on such proposals?” the question was asked in the Lok Sabha.  

To this, he replied, “Any such proposal for amending the name of the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, is not under consideration of the government.” 

On July 17, 1996, the city of Madras was officially christened as Chennai by the state government of Tamil Nadu. 

IITs are known for their rigorous admission process. They attracts hundreds of thousands of students every year. The academic and research programmes of these IITs are comparable to those of leading institutions worldwide. Undergraduate admissions are conducted through a joint entrance examination (JEE), and postgraduate admissions are conducted mainly through the Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE).  

The first Indian Institute of Technology (IIT Kharagpur) was established in 1951. Within a decade of the launch of the first IIT, four more IITs were set up: IIT Bombay (1958), IIT Madras (1959), IIT Kanpur (1959), and IIT Delhi (1961). After several decades, the sixth IIT was established in Guwahati (1994). India’s first technical institute, set up in 1847 and known as the Thomson College of Engineering and subsequently the University of Roorkee, was ordained as the seventh IIT in September 2001. In 2008, six more IITs were started: IIT Bhubaneswar, IIT Gandhinagar, IIT Hyderabad, IIT Patna, IIT Rajasthan, and IIT Ropar. This was followed by two more IITs in 2009: IIT Indore and IIT Mandi. 

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