IHMs to offer BSc Hotel Management degree with vegetarian cuisine specialisation

New Course with vegetarian cuisine specialisation to be offered by IHMs

Institutes of Hotel Management have been asked to offer three year BSc degree in hospitality and hotel administration with vegetarian cuisine specialisation by the Tourism Ministry. Sources share this move has been adopted after the ministry received a directive in this regard from PMO.

This new course – BSc in hospitality with specialisation in vegetarian cuisine, will be introduced in three Institutes of Hotel Management (IHMs) from this year itself on a pilot basis. The chosen three IHMs for this course are – IHM Gandhinagar, IHM Jaipur and IHM Bhopal.

As per reports coming in, the course will be introduced in other IHMs next year onwards. IHM officials share that all the IHMs are well-equipped with the required infrastructure such as separate kitchens to proceed with this course. Apart from that, monetary support would be provided to each IHM to ensure that the required facilities are made available before the commencement of the course.

However, this move isn’t being applauded by the hospitality industry as people feel that such a course would restrict the employability of students. 

Sources share that the proposal for this new all-vegetarian hospitality course was submitted by the then Textiles Minister, Santosh Gangwar, in June 2015. In the proposal he asked HRD to make non-vegetarian courses in hospitality industry optional. This request was made because it was felt that students from Brahmin, Jain and Vaishya communities were not able to pursue hospitality courses because they were asked to mandatorily cook non-vegetarian food as part of the curriculum.