City MP Vilas Muttemwar on Tuesday raised the issue of setting up an Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) at Nagpur in the Lok Sabha.

He said that the Maharashtra government had decided to set up such IIITs in Pune and Aurangabad.

The state government was in the process of finalising a partner for the project and 59.26 hectares of land in Pune has been identified for the purpose, a release issued by his office said in Nagpur.

He said that the central government should have instead finalised the proposal for the comparatively better deserving city of Nagpur which is in a backward region rather than already developed regions.

The policy needs to be reviewed in the light of balanced development of backward regions and therefore Nagpur is ideally suited for an IIIT, he said, since Nagpur has the potential to develop. He urged the government to establish an IIIT in Nagpur, the release said.

The central government has taken an initiative to sanction 20 IIITs across the country, for which central funding will be to the tune of 50 percent, while state government will be 35 percent and 15 percent would come from private partners.