The Indian Institute of Management (IIM) in Ranchi will move to its permanent campus in Dhurwa by mid-October after functioning from a temporary facility at Suchna Bhawan for more than a decade, officials from the premiere B-school said on Wednesday.

While the administrative office of the institute will be fully-operational in the permanent campus, only about half of the 1,000-odd students will be able to attend classes in the new campus and the remaining students will continue to attend classes at Suchna Bhawan, IIM-R Director Shailendra Singh told The Telegraph Online.

“The hostels that have been constructed so far in the main campus can accommodate about 400 students. The students who stay in these hostels will attend classes in the main campus, while the remaining ones will attend classes at Suchna Bhawan,” said Singh.

At present, IIM-R is using a government-facility in Khelgaon as a hostel for its students, who travel by bus from Hotwar to Suchna Bhawan on Kanke Road every day to attend classes. Half of the students will continue to stay at the temporary hostels in Khelgaon even after classes begin in the permanent campus.

The institute currently runs at least six courses, including PhD and integrated MBA, and has students from places as far as Kerala and Rajasthan. It also offers executive management courses for working professionals, who mostly attend classes online.

IIM-R, the ninth IIM in India, was established in December 2009, and has been functioning from a temporary campus since then. Initially, the government’s attempts at finding land for the institute’s permanent campus were marred by protests by land owners. Eventually, the government finalised an over 60 acre plot in Dhurwa for IIM-R’s permanent campus.

The IIM-R director admitted that the struggle to find a land for a permanent campus and eventually shift to it has been a long and challenging one. He said that the new campus is now ready with at least 10 classrooms, the director’s chamber, the administrative building, dining hall and faculty quarters. However, the lack of space in hostels continues to be a stumbling block in shifting all operations to the permanent campus.

“We even looked for places around the new campus which could accommodate about 600 students, but we failed to find any such property. So, the students staying at Khelgaon will have to attend classes at Suchna Bhawan for now,” said Singh. “We will positively start operating out of the main campus soon after Dussehra,” he added.

In December 2020, then Rajya Sabha MP Parimal Nathwani inaugurated the institute’s first building in the permanent campus, a fully air-conditioned auditorium spread over 40,000 square feet of area.