Budget 2025 for education: IIT infrastructure to expand, 10,000 new medical seats, cancer care upgrade

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s Budget 2025 didn’t just crunch numbers—it laid out a bold roadmap for India’s education and healthcare sectors. From turbocharging IIT capacities to adding thousands of new medical seats, the government is betting big on the future.

“In the last 10 years, the capacity of IITs has expanded by 100% from 65,000 to 1.3 lakhs,” Sitharaman announced, underlining the government’s aggressive push to bolster technical education. But the expansion isn’t stopping there.

“Our government will add additional infrastructure for five IITs started after 2014, this will be for the facilitation of 6,500 more students,” she added, signaling continued investment in India’s premier tech institutes.

IIT Patna is also in for a facelift, with plans to expand hostel and other infrastructure capacities.

On the healthcare front, Sitharaman highlighted a staggering growth in medical education over the past decade. “Nearly 1.1 lakh undergraduate and postgraduate medical seats have been added—an increase of 130%,” she stated. The momentum continues with 10,000 more seats slated for the coming year as part of an ambitious plan to introduce 75,000 seats over the next five years.

But it’s not just about education. The budget includes a significant push to enhance cancer care across the country. “The establishment of daycare cancer centres in all district hospitals over the next three years” is on the agenda, with “200 centres set up in FY 2025-26 alone,” Sitharaman declared.

Additionally, the budget aims to strengthen urban livelihoods, focusing on economic stability and job creation for the urban poor and vulnerable groups through targeted initiatives.