State to spend Rs 2,500 cr to upgrade govt higher education institutions

Bengaluru: The Karnataka cabinet on Friday decided to spend Rs 2,500 crore to upgrade the government higher education institutions, for which it will borrow Rs 1,750 crore. The government has decided to implement a scheme for strengthening government higher education institutions with external funding of Rs 2,500 crore, Karnataka Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister H K Patil told reporters after the cabinet meeting.

He said Rs 1,750 crore will be borrowed from the World Bank while Rs 750 crore will be the state government's share.

This amount of Rs 2,500 crore would be spent over a period of four years, starting from July 2025 and a preliminary project report would be submitted to the World Bank through the Department of Economic Affairs, Government of India for approval of external funding.

“The primary objective of the department is to provide quality education and the aim is to provide resources to private institutions in the state to improve the standard of higher education,” the Minister told reporters.

The government also resolved to publish the draft of the Karnataka Educational Institutions (Terms and Conditions for Recognition of Minority Educational Institutions) (College Education) (1st Amendment) Rules, 2024 (Annexure-3) in the Karnataka Gazette and invite objections and suggestions from those affected thereby.

If no objections or suggestions are received to the draft rules or no major amendments are made in the draft rules after considering the objections or suggestions received, the said draft rules will be finalised without re-presenting them before the Cabinet, Patil said.

Since the population of Muslim, Christian, Sikh, Jain, Buddhist and Parsi communities in the total minority population of the State is very low, it was proposed to amend these rules as it was difficult to obtain the percentage of students prescribed in the existing rules and orders for declaring educational institutions run by minority communities as minority educational institutions.

The cabinet also gave its nod to the Phase-3A of the Bengaluru Metro Rail project from Sarjapur to Hebbal covering a distance of 36.59 km.

It comprises 22.14 km of elevated line with 17 metro stations and 14.45 km of tunnel lines with 11 stations, at a total estimated cost of Rs. 28,405.00 crore.