President Murmu to be chief guest at IARI convocation tomorrow

NEW DELHI: The Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), New Delhi will hold its 62nd convocation ceremony on Friday. President Droupadi Murmu will be the chief guest of the convocation ceremony which will be held at the Bharat Ratna C Subramaniam Hall of the National Agricultural Science Complex (NASC), Delhi. Union agriculture and farmers welfare minister Arjun Munda and Minister of State (MoS) for agriculture and farmers welfare Kailash Chaudhary will be the guests of honor during this program.

During this convocation, 543 students, including five foreign students, across 26 disciplines in agricultural sciences will receive the degrees.

IARI, popularly known as Pusa Institute, is celebrating its 62nd convocation week from February 4 to 9, 2024. On February 4 and 5, MSc , MTech, and Ph.D. students made presentations showcasing their research accomplishments. On February 6 and 7, professors representing different schools made presentations of significant educational achievements for the year 2023. A special lecture by the recipient of 23rd Sukumar Basu Memorial Award was held on February 7 along with the 420th Meeting of the academic council, IARI. Himanshu Pathak, secretary Department of Agricultural Research and Education (DARE) and director general of ICAR delivered the 54th Lal Bahadur Shastri Memorial Lecture on February 8.

IARI expansion

Pathak along with AK Singh, vice chancellor and director of IARI; Anupama Singh, IARI dean and joint director (education); IARI joint directors C Viswanathan and Rabindra Nath Padaria held a press conference on the eve of convocation. They highlighted the achievement of IARI of the academic session 2023-24.

In response to a question from Careers360 on the reason behind starting an Undergraduate (UG) agriculture course in India's premier agricultural research institute and a deemed university, Pathak said, “We have expanded the reach of the institute and taken it to other parts of the country. Earlier students used to come here for their masters course and research programmes. We started the UG agricultural course from the academic session 2022-2023.”

Pathak informed that IARI under the umbrella of an IARI mega university has started admissions in different ICAR institutes and created 16 hubs at Assam, Baramati, Bengaluru, Bhopal, Cuttack, Hyderabad, Jharkhand, Jodhpur, Karnal, Kolkata, Lucknow, Nagpur, Patna, Raipur, Ranchi and Shillong.

“They have similar course curricula, admission processes, infrastructure and other things. Their research topics will be based on problems in their respective institute areas but degrees will be awarded here. They are the extended branches of IARI,” he said.

IARI director Singh said that in the academic session 2023-24 around 1,200 students were admitted to IARI including 398 students who have been admitted to the undergraduate programme, 298 Students in MSc and MTech and 408 are admitted to PhD programme at IARI in 26 disciplines. “In the next academic session 2024-25, we will admit the same number of students as we are increasing the facilities and infrastructure for students,” Singh said.

Singh further informed that an international 500 room boys hostel ‘Madhumas’ equipped with modern amenities was inaugurated on July 3, 2023 and agriculture minister Munda inaugurated the 500 room Girls hostel ‘Phalguni’ on January 31, 2024. “So, we have increased the hostel facilities for 1000 students. We will enhance such facilities at 16 IARI hubs and increase the number of admissions in coming years,” he said.

Scraping All India Entrance Examination for Admission-Undergraduate (AIEEA-UG), ICAR in March 2023 announced to offer admission to undergraduate programmes in agriculture and allied subjects through the Common University Entrance Test for Undergraduate (CUET) UG from the academic year 2023-24. CUET UG is conducted by the National Testing Agency (NTA).

IARI awards degrees in 26 disciplines. At present, the total number of students on the roll is 2,687 including 585 MSc, MTech, 1,385 PhD, 717 UG, and 10 international students (9 PhD and 1 MSc).

IARI is the most sought destination for students from both India and abroad for agricultural education and secured the top spot in the country in the National Institute of Ranking Framework (NIRF) ranking 2023 under Agriculture and allied sectors. National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) grade ‘A’ was awarded to ICAR-IARI in 2023.