State Cabinet approves draft NIE varsity law

The National Institute of Engineering (NIE) in Mysuru, one of Karnataka’s oldest private engineering colleges, will be upgraded into a university as the Cabinet on Wednesday approved a draft legislation in this regard.

The draft NIE University Bill, 2019, was cleared a week after Infosys cofounder N R Narayana Murthy, an NIE alumnus and a director there, met Deputy Chief Minister G Parameshwara.

Murthy, who secured his electrical engineering degree from the institute in 1966, has been pushing to develop NIE on a par with international standards.

Building plan

The Cabinet also approved the building plan of Sri Siddhartha Academy of Higher Education, where Parameshwara serves as the chancellor, on an 18.27 acre land in T Begur and Thippagondanahalli in Nelamangala. “The town planning department had not approved it, but the government has now looked into it,” RDPR Minister Krishna Byre Gowda told reporters during the Cabinet briefing.

Meanwhile, Minor Irrigation Minister C S Puttaraju of the JD(S) is said to have left the Cabinet meeting midway, apparently in protest against the Congress ministers’ silence on the way Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy is being talked about by the grand old party’s legislators.