The Union Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizers is all set to establish a NIPER (National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research) like institute in Madurai soon. A team of experts from the Department of Pharmaceuticals has made two rounds of visits and identified the site for the project in the city last week.

Sources connected with the project told Pharmabiz that Madurai would be the sixth place in the country to establish an institute like NIPER. At five locations in the country namely Mohali (Chandigargh), Hyderabad, Kolkata, Rae Bareli and Guwahati NIPER like establishments are already operating. The Ministry wants the unit to be established in Madurai from the next academic year, it is learnt.

The NIPER at Madurai will have three courses in the initial stage, Pharma Informatics, Pharmaceutical Biotechnology & Pharmacology, and Toxicology and Biotechnology. More courses will be introduced later. It is learnt that the classes for the courses will be started either at Madurai Medical College or Madurai Kamaraj University.

The members of the team who visited the sites included P Rama Rao, director, NIPER, C L Kaul, former director; and R C Jha, director, Department of Pharmaceuticals. They inspected sites at Edaiyapatti and Ambalapatti around Madurai. Sources said the establishment of the unit is part of establishing industries and bring in development works to the southern districts of the state.

The team will submit their project assessment report based on their visit to the Planning Commission and the Cabinet for approval.

The highly placed sources said the estimated cost of setting up of NIPER is Rupees. 200 crore and a land area of 100 acres from the state government is also required. This is in addition to the inspected sites where 266 acres in Edaiyapatti and 300 acres in Ambalapatti were already identified for the project. The basic requirements for the project are good infrastructure, water, uninterrupted power supply and better connectivity to the city.