As a central government scheme to revive industrial training institutes in association with private industries failed to take off, the Madhya Pradesh government has demanded that private engineering colleges run industrial training institutes (ITIs) and polytechnic (diploma) courses also. The state has plans to offer them land free of cost to set up the ITIs.

A number of private colleges have mushroomed across the state, as a result of which as many as 20,000 seats are lying vacant in these colleges.

"Ideally, an engineer needs four diploma-holder engineers and sixteen ITI professionals to execute a task in our society. Therefore, we need as many as 320,000 polytechnic seats and 1.2 million ITI seats each year," said technical education minister Laxmikant Sharma.

At present, the state has only 22,000 polytechnic seats and 27,000 ITI seats.

During the last five years, local students skipped seeking admissions in engineering colleges, while ITIs and polytechnic colleges ran age-old courses. Therefore, a large number of diploma-holder engineers were turned down by industries. The state has allowed students of other states to participate in entrance exams. "This year there was a significant rise in students from other states. Last year, only 3,000 students were admitted to various private engineering colleges," an official added.