The Calcutta City Network

The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi, is tying up with a Calcutta campus and bringing its expertise in management studies to the table.
NSHM Academy, a city institute, is investing Rs 55 crore to set up a business and management school and a media and communications school in Calcutta.
The institute will tie up with IIT Delhi’s department of management studies to draw up the postgraduate curriculum for the new school.
IIT Delhi will collaborate with NSHM in more ways. It will determine faculty positions for the management school.
The IIT will also ensure quality control by monitoring the teaching standards.
“Nowhere else in the country has an IIT entered into such a tie-up. This is also for the first time that IIT Delhi is making a foray into the eastern zone of the country,” said Cecil Antony, chairman of NSHM Academy.
The academy is affiliated to the West Bengal University of Technology for its undergraduate courses.
“We have spoken to Harish Chaudhury, professor of the department of management studies, IIT Delhi. He is helping us prepare the methodology and the format of the courses on the lines of IIT Delhi,” Antony said.
Chaudhury, speaking from Delhi, said: “The teaching format at most B-schools is not up to the mark. We also have plans to conduct special classes in the Calcutta institute by teachers of IIT Delhi.”
The undergraduate programmes start from August this year and the post-graduate schedule from next year.
The academy has obtained a 2.2-acre plot in Tollygunge, adjacent to South City Garden on BL Saha Road. The organisation can build on an area of 160,000 sq ft, and it has already built on 50,000 sq ft. The construction will be ready by 2008.
The campus will house the management and media schools, and accommodate over 300 students.

“The entire work of South City (Project), should be closed.”
“Tower III and Tower IV should be demolished.”

These are the first two recommendations of the committee set up by the West Bengal Pollution Control Board in April to “examine all the issues in respect of South City Projects”.

“I am not aware of the panel’s report and hence, cannot make any comment. Besides, the matter is sub judice,” declared South City CEO Sanjay Choudhury.

The largest residential-cum-commercial project of the city on Prince Anwar Shah Road has been found guilty of flouting environmental norms, as reported in a newspaper on March 1.

The four-member panel, in the report submitted last week , orders a halt on all work at the estate and restoration of Bikramgarh Jheel, bordering the site, for the following reasons:

• “…construction work of Tower III and Tower IV have encroached waterbody and also developed by filling up of the waterbody”

• “South City has failed to show any waterbody area of 1.31 acre for which it obtained permission from the state board for fill up”

• “South City failed to show any area where 1.41 acre of land will be developed as waterbody as per their commitment against the filling up of the waterbody of 1.31 acre”.

South City has been directed to first demolish Tower III (construction of ground floor complete, according to the project’s website as on April 21) and Tower IV (foundation complete, again according to the website), and then “prepare full Environment Impact Assessment through government institution or from any reputed university…”.

The Rs 500-crore-plus project, spread over 31 acres, is to have around 1,600 flats in four residential towers, along with a mall with a multiplex, a school, a club and more.

The committee, headed by Prof P.N. Roy, also chairman of the state-level Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) committee, has recommended “proper steps against the persons who issued or accorded permission (to South City) for filling up of the waterbody and issued ‘consent to establish’ without application of mind and violating the law of the land”.

In its findings, the committee labels “the permission accorded for filling up of the waterbody highly irregular” and the “entire modus operandi of the state board questionable and bad in law”.

The committee holds the then chief engineer Biman Basu and present chief engineer Ranjit Kumar Ghosh responsible for the “highly irregular” permission. It also states that “S.K. Sarkar, the then member secretary… violated the law of the land and issued permission for filling up of the waterbody as per the advice of (the then) principal secretary, department of environment, Asim Burman”.

Pollution board chairman Sudip Banerjee said: “We have received the report and are examining it.”

In a related development, the Union forest and environment ministry has asked for an action taken report from the state pollution control board (PCB) on the South City matter, enclosing the March 1 newspaper article as “self-explanatory”.