The government of the National Capital Territory of Delhi has elevated the status of the state's College of Pharmacy into a self-sustaining institute. The college will now be known as Delhi Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences & Research (DIPS). The autonomous status given to the institute by the government has allowed it to start self-financing courses from the current academic year.

As a first step, DIPS is introducing evening classes for B Pharm course. The institute has received All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) approval for admitting 60 students for the course. The degrees for the evening course will be awarded by Indra Prastha University, it is learnt.

Speaking to Pharmabiz.com, Dr S S Agrawal, director, DIPS informed that the institute would be self-sustaining in five years due to the evening course. The college had recently received AICTE approval for increasing its B Pharm seats from 45 to 60 for its regular batch. The same facility would be utilized to conduct evening courses also. While selection to the evening course will be capitation fee based, the students selected for morning batch would be purely merit based, he informed.

Recently the institute started post-graduate programme in quality assurance. Dr Agrawal said that the response to the course is encouraging.

The DIPS is planning to introduce four more specialized postgraduate programmes in pharmacy. The institute is in the process of having massive infrastructure in place before it could go full fledged with the new courses, Dr Agrawal said.

The institute is also picking up as a drug research centre. Current research activities are based on areas like anti-fertility, anti-diabetic, ocular drug delivery system etc. The institute is also working on developing NDDS for existing drugs. Recently, DIPS had completed standardization process of seven ISM drugs. The drugs are to be included in the pharmacopoeia soon, director informed.

The institute has been chosen by AICTE as the training institute for conducting quality improvement programmes for college teachers. "Through AICTE there are 10 teachers doing PHD here," he said.

The DIPS is the only institution in the country where Union Public Service Commission carries out appointments.