Nuclear scientist Anil Kakodkar will be asked to review the functioning of the 30 National Institutes of Technology.
    This was decided at a meeting of the NIT Council on Tuesday. The Council also decided to promote the admission of foreign students through the All India Engineering Entrance Examination on-line test.
    HRD minister Kapil Sibal, who is the chairperson of the NIT Council, suggested that since NITs have completed a decade of existence, there should be a review by Kakodkar who carried out a similar exercise for IITs recently.
    He stressed the need for networking amongst IITs, NITs and other institutions and said in order to promote better coordination, the directors and chairpersons of these institutes should meet once a year to discuss larger issues connected with technical education and research.
    The Council also reviewed the admission policy for undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. It was emphasized that the 50% quota for students from outside the state in each NIT should not be filled by students from the state. Sibal said the government wanted a single national level test for admission to all engineering institutions.