newznew (Chandigarh) : The Foundation stone for National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT) Panchkula has been jointly laid today by Smt. Smriti Zubin Irani, Union Minister of Textiles and Shri Manohar Lal, Chief Minister of Haryana. It is another milestone towards the progress of Technical Education in Haryana State. Presently, NIFT is running 16 Centres across the country and NIFT Centre Panchkula will be 17th Campus in the Country which shall be developed as World-Class NIFT Centre. NIFT Panchkula campus is expected to be made functional by the year 2019 in collaboration with Union Ministry of Textiles and NIFT New Delhi.
On the occasion, Union Minister of Textiles, Smt. Smriti Zubin Irani said that after agriculture, textile industry has maximum job opportunity in the country and there is about 90 billion dollar investment in textile sector in India. She also appreciated Haryana Government for securing 5th place at National level in business investment sector.
Shri Manohar Lal, Chief Minister of Haryana said that the State Government is committed to provide funds amounting to Rs.99.71 crore towards development of buildings, infrastructure, hostel, staff residence, furniture, IT Hardware and Software, vehicles, etc. as well as viability gap funding for the first four years of the running of the NIFT Project. As per policy of NIFT, 20% seats for Haryana domiciles would be reserved for admission in NIFT Panchkula.
Smt. Sharda Muralidharan, Director General of NIFT said that there is a proposal to start 6 regular degree courses and continuing education programe in the field of Fashion Design, Technology and Management at this centre from the academic session 2019-20. The annual intake in the proposed courses will be 230 and the estimated strength of students in the NIFT Campus will be around 1000.
The Building infrastructure for NIFT Campus have been designed by Department of Architecture, Haryana and construction work of the project has been assigned to Haryana Police Housing Corporation (HPHC). The construction work of NIFT Centre Panchkula is expected to be started by April 2017.
Shri Rattan Lal Kataria, Member Parliament of Ambala, Shri Ram Vilas Sharma, Education Minister of Haryana and Smt. Kavita Jain, Women and Child Development Minister of Haryana attended the function among others.