After a long wait and many twists and turns, the foundation stone laying ceremony of the National Institute of Technology (NIT) Srinagar will now finally be held at Sumadi village on October 19.

On Tuesday, Dhan Singh Rawat, Minister of State for Higher Education, Dairy Development, Cooperative and Protocol,  took a meeting of the officials at his office in Vidhan Sabha.

In the meeting, the modalities of the programme were discussed in detail. Later, the Minister informed that the foundation stone laying ceremony would be held at Sumadi village of near Srinagar at 9.30 am.

Later, a public meeting will be held at GNIT ground in which Governor of Uttarakhand Baby Rani Maurya, Chief Minister of Uttarakhand  Trivendra Singh Rawat, Human Resource Development (HRD) Minister Ramesh Pokhariyal ‘Nishank’,  Garhwal Member of Parliament (MP) Teerath Singh Rawat, Nainital- Udham Singh Nagar MP Ajay Bhatt, cabinet Ministers Satpal Maharaj, Harak Singh Rawat and Subodh Uniyal are expected to participate.

The meeting with the Minister at Vidhan Sabha was attended by the secretary higher education Ashok Kumar, Director NIT Srinagar and other officials.

The State Government has earmarked a land of 203 acre  at Sumadi village for the institute.  On this land a permanent campus of NIT would be constructed.

Set up in the year 2010 in Srinagar in Garhwal, the NIT is functioning from a temporary campus. The administrative block and the labs are in the old ITI campus while the students have to go to the Poly-technique college campus for classes. From last nine years the process of identifying land for the permanent campus and its construction has been hanging in balance.

The villagers of Sumari and Niyal villages had even donated 120 hectares of the land for the institute. Some forest land was also transferred for the institute but the NIT authorities citing some reports rejected the land as being not safe.

Last year death of a girl student in accident near temporary campus agitated the students.

On October 22, they took an extreme step of leaving the institute en masse. Heeding to the demand of the students of shifting the institute, the Union Human Resource Development Ministry (HRD) set up a transit campus for these students in NIT Jaipur. Things changed when Ramesh Pokhariyal Nishank became the Union HRD Minister. With combined efforts of Nishank and Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat, the roadblocks in the path of setting up a permanent campus in Sumari were cleared.