In a bid to give an impetus to the higher education sector, the government on Friday decided to establish four new Indian Institutes of Technology and six Indian Institutes of Management in various states, besides upgrading some of the state universities to the status of central universities.

While the new IITs would be located in Orissa, Madhya Pradesh (Indore), Gujarat and Punjab, the IIMs would come up in Tamil Nadu, Jammu and Kashmir, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh (Raipur), Uttarakhand and Haryana.

These new institutions would be part of the eight IITs and seven IIMs proposed to be set up during the 11th Five Year Plan.

The government has already announced establishment of four IITs in Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, Bihar and Himachal Pradesh and one IIM at Shillong.

The location of the new higher education institutions has been approved by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, HRD Minister Arjun Singh told reporters in New Delhi.

In addition, he said the government proposed to convert the Institute of Technology of the Banaras Hindu University into an IIT. Admission to this Institute was already based on the IIT-Joint Entrance Examination.

Singh said it has also proposed to establish during the 11th five year plan period 14 Universities with world class standards and 16 universities in states, which do not have a central university at present.

Singh said the establishment of new IITs, IIMs and central universities was subject to state governments offering adequate land at suitable locations, at free of cost.

The 14 central universities aiming at world class standards would be located in Pune, Kolkata, Coimbatore, Mysore, Visakhapatnam, Gandhinagar, Jaipur, Patna, Bhopal, Kochi, Amritsar, Bhubaneswar, Greater NOIDA and Guwahati.

The locations have been decided keeping in mind the connectivity and the infrastructure which such universities would need, he said. The state governments would be requested to identify adequate land in or near the selected cities, Singh said adding the contour and shape of such world class universities would be defined shortly.

To a question whether the decision to set up these new institutions was based on political considerations, Singh said the government has decided on them after taking everything into consideration.

Dismissing a suggestion that Kerala has been left out in the exercise, he said the southern state has got a central university and a world class university. "It is not correct that Kerala is left high and dry", he said.