New Delhi, March 16 A 50-acre plot in Haryana's Jhajjar district, designated for the extension campus of IIT-Delhi, has been found unsuitable in soil tests. The tests revealed that the land was too weak and waterlogged to support construction, 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.
"The proposed extension campus of IIT Delhi in Jhajjar, Haryana, was earlier planned. However, based on a technical survey conducted at the site, it was concluded that the land's load-bearing capacity is very low due to its topography and waterlogging, and therefore, the land could not meet the requirements of IIT Delhi for constructing its planned facilities," Majumdar said.
The IIT-Delhi campus in Jhajjar, announced in 2022, was envisioned as the country's first-of-its-kind research and development center 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 serves as a hub for advanced research, innovation, and industry collaboration. Currently, there are 35 sophisticated facilities, valued approximately at Rs 190 crore, to support the research of chemists, physicists, biologists, material scientists, and engineers from academic and R&D 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.