Agartala, June 8 - Northeast India's first IIIT (Indian Institute of Information Technology) will be set up in Tripura, a minister said here Friday.

Tripura Education Minister Tapan Chakraborty told reporters: "Union Human Resource Development and Information Technology Minister Kapil Sibal informed at a meeting in New Delhi Tuesday that northeast's first IIIT would be set up in Tripura."

"The HRD ministry has decided to establish 20 more IIITs in the country in the Public Private Partnership (PPP) mode. In the first phase, five IIITs would be set up in different parts of India, including one in Tripura," he said quoting Sibal.

Currently, there are four IIITs in India -- Allahabad, Gwalior, Jabalpur and Kanchipuram. These autonomous institutions are providing undergraduate as well as postgraduate technical education.

"The central government has decided to provide more financial aid to the northeastern states than the other parts of the country to set up the IIITs," Chakraborty added.

On an average, Rs.128 crore would be invested to set up each IIIT.

"To establish the IIITs in the northeast, the central government would provide 57.5 percent share of the total cost while the state government would give 35 percent share and the private or industrial houses' share would be 7.5 percent," the minister said.

To set up the IIITs in the other parts of India, excluding the northeast region, the central government's share would be around 50 percent and the industrial share would be around ten percent.

The Tripura minister quoted Sibal as saying that "as India is emerging as a global player in the field of information technology and the IT industry is expanding rapidly, manpower requirement is growing exponentially. In order to develop manpower for different areas of the knowledge economy, education and training of information technology, the centre has decided to set up more IIITs in the country."

Sibal chaired Tuesday's conference of state and union territories' education ministers in New Delhi.