IISc best varsity in India, JNU ranks 2nd

According to the educational institute rankings released by the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Miranda House has been declared as the best college in the country, and the Indian Institute of Science, (IISc) Bangalore named as the best university.

Jawaharlal Nehru University and Jadavpur University, the two universities from where students have been at loggerheads with the government over the past one year, have been declared as the second and fifth best universities of India.

While releasing these rankings, HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar said, "JNU and Jadavpur have been ranked among the top for their good work, and not for the objectionable sloganeering in the campus."

The Ministry of Human Resource Development on Monday released educational rankings called the National Institutional Rankings Framework (NIRF) for the best institutions in the country. There were a total of 525 colleges competing for the ranking.

Six Delhi University colleges including Miranda House, Atma Ram Sanatan Dharma College, Lady Shri Ram College for Women, Dyal Singh College, and Deen Dayal Upadhyay College have been ranked among top 10 colleges in the country. Delhi University, under the university category, has slipped two spots from last year's rankings to stand at eight.

The Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bangalore, which was ranked the best institution last year as well, has been ranked as the best in two categories this year — the best institute (overall), and the best university. The Indian Institute of Technology, Madras and Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad have been ranked as the best engineering and management institutes respectively, for the second year in a row.

This is the second edition of India Rankings, an initiative started by the BJP government in 2016. The first edition was released by HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar's predecessor Smriti Irani. In this edition, a total of 2,995 institutions participated, which includes 232 universities, 1,024 engineering institutions, 546 management, 318 pharmacy and 637 general degree colleges.

"India Rankings have ranked institutions on various categories including university, colleges, management, engineering, pharmacy and management. An overall rank across disciplines has also been provided to institutions that have either 1,000 enrolled students, or which are centrally funded,"the HRD Ministry said in a statement.

The institutions have been ranked based on various categories including 'teaching, learning and resource', 'research', 'graduation outcomes', 'outreach' and 'perception'. While most of the categories are the same as the previous year, some improvisations were made this year in sub-categories, which included employers' perspective for the perception category, and giving weightage to the number of citations of research papers to calculate rankings under the research category.

The current government has been giving a lot of emphasis to rankings. While announcing the rankings on Monday, HRD Minister also announced that more grants would be given to institutes that have better rankings.