New Delhi, Mar 16 (PTI) A 50-acre land parcel in Haryana's Jhajjar district earmarked for extension campus of IIT-Delhi has been found unfit in soil tests which revealed that the land was too weak and waterlogged to support construction, the Lok Sabha was informed on Monday.
The information was shared by Union Minister of State for Education Sukanta Majumdar in response to a written question.
"An extension campus of IIT Delhi at Jhajjar, Haryana was earlier proposed. However, based on the technical survey held at the location, it was concluded or found that the load bearing capacity of the land is very low due to its topography and waterlogging and therefore, the land could not meet the requirements of IIT Delhi for construction of its planned facilities," Majumdar said.
IIT-Delhi's Jhajjar campus, announced in 2022, was being envisioned as the country's first-of-its-kind research and development centre for patient-specific drug development for cancer treatment and medical equipment technologies.
"IIT Delhi already has its extension campus situated on 50 acres within the Rajiv
Gandhi Education City (RGEC) in Sonipat, Haryana. The campus acts as a hub for advanced research, innovation, and industry collaboration. Currently, there are 35 sophisticated facilities, valued approximately at Rs 190 crores, to support the research of chemists, physicists, biologists, material scientists, and engineers from academic and RND institutes, as well as MSMEs and industry.
"The research facilities include high-end light and electron microscopes, a 3D metal printer, chemical and material synthesis and characterization devices, spectroscopy/spectrometry, and environmental monitoring devices. In addition to
the centralized research facilities, the Sonipat campus contains the laboratories of the optics and photonics unit of IIT Delhi, the Atal Incubation Centre for translational research, and a new high performance computational facility," the minister said.