The Union Government on Saturday announced a significant increase in student intake across five Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) over the next five years and an additional 10,000 seats in medical colleges and hospitals over the next year.

The government will develop infrastructure to facilitate the education of another 6,500 students across five third-generation IITs (set up after 2014) – IIT Palakkad, Dharwad, Jammu, Bhilai, and Tirupati. Permanent campuses have been established for these IITs over the past couple of years.

These seats will be added in phases over five years and would be mainly at the undergraduate or BTech level, Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan told reporters. The total number of students across 23 IITs had increased from 65,000 to 1.35 lakh over the past ten years.

With the Bihar Assembly election this year, expansion of hostels and other infrastructure facilities at IIT Patna was also announced. “From being teaching institutions, the now larger and long-term goal for IITs would be to teach, do research and innovate,” Pradhan told The Indian Express.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Saturday also announced that 10,000 medical undergraduate and postgraduate seats will be added over the next year. This, she said, would be towards the goal of expanding the number of medical seats by 75,000 over five years. There has been a massive expansion in the number of medical seats over the last decade — the number of MBBS seats has increased from 51,384 before 2014 to 1,12,112 in 2024 and the number of PG seats has increased from 31,185 to 72,627.

The budget also makes a provision for 10,000 fellowships over the next five years at IITs and the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), under the PM Research Fellowship scheme. Allocation for the scheme has been hiked from Rs. 350 crore in 2024-25 to Rs. 600 crore this year. The scheme was first announced in the 2018-19 budget, when then Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said that 1000 students will be identified for the fellowship to do their PhDs at IITs and IISc.

The total allocation for education this year is Rs. 1.28 lakh crore, a rise from an allocation of Rs. 1.20 lakh crore last year.

The higher education sector has seen a 5% increase in allocation compared to last year – from a figure of Rs. 47,619 crore last year, it has risen to 50,077 crore this year. School education saw an 8% increase, from Rs. 73,008 crore last year to 78,572 crore this year.

In higher education, allocation has risen for Indian Knowledge Systems (a five-fold increase from Rs. 10 crore last year to Rs. 50 crore this year), the National Apprenticeship Training Scheme for on-the-job skilling opportunities (a near two-fold rise from Rs. 600 crore last year to Rs. 1178 crore this year), and IITs (an increase of around Rs. 1,025 crore).

The All Indian Council for Technical Education (AICTE), the regulatory body for technical education, has seen its allocation be halved from Rs. 400 crore last year to Rs. 200 crore this year. Sources in the Ministry of Education pointed to the expenditure of the regulatory body having been low – the revised estimate for the previous year was only Rs. 137 crore. “A regulatory body is meant to set standards. It’s not a funding agency. So any change in its budget doesn’t mean the government will not spend that money directly on education,” said a senior ministry official who did not wish to identified.

In school education, the Pradhan Mantri Innovative Learning Programme, a scheme to provide mentorship to talented students, has seen an uptick in allocation from 0.01 crore last year to Rs. 55 crore this year. PM Schools for Rising India (PM-SHRI) has seen a 24% increase in allocation this year, while the Samagra Shiksha scheme has recorded a 10% rise.

Sitharaman had also announced that 50,000 Atal Tinkering Labs will be set up in government schools over the next five years to “foster scientific temper among young minds.”

The Centre’s Atal Innovation Mission introduced Atal Tinkering Labs in 2016-17 and around 10,000 such labs have already been set up in schools across the country. The Centre provides funds to schools to set up the lab and operate and maintain it for five years. These labs contain equipment like 3D printers, and tools and kits for students to learn STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) concepts, including aspects of robotics and artificial intelligence. These labs are meant for students in classes 6 to 12.

Sources in the AICTE said that the Rs. 200 crore indicated in the budget is earmarked for scholarships, and that this amount varies each year depending on the number of beneficiaries. “Furthermore, few postgraduate scholarships are taken as fewer students are opting for MTech in engineering disciplines. AICTE generates its own funds for its operations, except for the scholarships,” the source added.