Mita Mukherjee

The National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) of the Union ministry of education has ranked Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras), first among all Indian institutes in ‘overall’ and ‘engineering’ categories and declared Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bangalore the best institution in the country in ‘research’ in its 2021 ranking released by Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan on Thursday.

The 62-year old institute, IIT- Madras retained the NIRF top rank in the “overall” category for three years in a row and in “engineering” for the sixth consecutive year.

“We are delighted to maintain our pre-eminent position in the NIRF rankings yet again,” Bhaskar Ramamurthi, IIT Madras director said after the ranking result was released.

In the 2021 NIRF ranking, IISc Bangalore has been ranked second in the ‘overall’ category and the research category in which the institute has got the top rank this time has been introduced this year.  

Another institute of Bangalore, National Law School of India University has been ranked first among all other law institutes in the country.

In the university category after IISc Bangalore, the NIRF declared Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) Delhi the second best in the country. The Central University has been able to retain the status for the fifth time in a row.

Congratulating students, teachers, officers and staff, JNU vice-chancellor Prof M Jagadesh Kumar said: “ We feel really happy that despite the globally debilitating Covid-19 pandemic, JNU teachers and students have put in their entire effort and energy in continuing with research and teaching in all sincerity. We draw immense satisfaction from the innovative research and teaching programmes JNU has launched over the past five years.”

The NIRF ranks institutes, universities and colleges on five parameters including teaching learning and resources: research and professional practice; graduation outcomes; outreach and inclusivity; and peer perception.

The 11 categories under which the ranking was held this time are overall, university, engineering, colleges, medical, management, law, pharmacy, architecture, dental and research.

In its 2021 ranking the NIRF ranked Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Ahmedabad the best management institute in the country, while Miranda House, Delhi the best college in India.

All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Delhi bagged the top rank among medical colleges and Jamia  Hamdard, Delhi  has been declared the best among the institutions that offer courses in pharmacy.   

The NIRF ranked Visva-Bharati university at Santiniketan in West Bengal at 64 among all Indian universities which is a big slide from last year’s position of 50.

The university set up by Rabindranath Tagore had been witnessing a series of students’ and teachers’ agitation and protests against the authorities for the past several months. Veteran alumni and academics attributed the downfall in the ranking to the “poor” governance and urged the authorities to concentrate on improving the academic standard of the university.