Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman inaugurates BITS Pilani's new campus in Kalyan

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman inaugurated a new campus of BITS Pilani in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region, near Kalyan, on Saturday. The campus, the fifth of its kind, will host the institution's management, law, and design schools. 

The sprawling 63-acre campus, built with an investment of Rs 1500 crore, is designed to accommodate 5,000 students. During her address, Sitharaman lauded BITS Pilani for its excellence in education and its ability to prepare students for the job market. 

"You can have institutions and institutions where students can enrol, study and pass out and also manage to excel in their fields but to make available a very complex set of courses, but make it also market relevant, give them the ability and skills required so that they can be readily recruited and be of value to the institutions is something which is seen as a USP of BITS Pilani,' she added.

"I wish the fifth campus all the very best, and it continues with the tradition of high-quality education for aspiring Indian youth."

Kumar Mangalam Birla, Chancellor of BITS Pilani, expressed his gratitude to Sitharaman and shared his vision of blending India's educational heritage with modern learning environments.

"At BITS, we stand at the precipice of blending India's rich heritage of education with new-age knowledge systems and modern learning environments. This globally benchmarked campus is a visible marker of India's growing intellectual prowess and a symbol of BITS Pilani's whole-hearted embrace of multi-disciplinary education and innovation," said Kumar Mangalam Birla.

"I am certain that the new campus will create an enabling environment that sparks creativity, excellence, and collaboration, emerging in the process as a talent factory for the New India envisioned by our Honourable Prime Minister," he added.

The campus, built with an eye on sustainability, utilises 100 percent recycled water, energy-saving lighting systems, and solar power. It also features state-of-the-art infrastructure, including multimedia studios and a startup incubation centre, and 80 percent open green spaces for students.