NEW DELHI, October 11 — The Ministry of Education in partnership with NITI Aayog’s Atal Innovation Mission (AIM) on Sunday released the latest National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) Innovation assessment—adjudging IIT Madras, IIT Bombay, and IISc Bengaluru as India's top three innovation-driven academic institutions—while sanctioning ₹3,000 crore to establish 15,000 new Atal Tinkering Labs (ATL 2.0) across government schools in Aspirational Districts and Blocks.
Building upon the existing network of 10,000 ATLs that currently expose over 1.1 crore secondary school students to hands-on 3D printing, robotics, Internet of Things (IoT) sensors, and drone fabrication, the ATL 2.0 expansion integrates vernacular generative AI modules and semiconductor design kits into the school curriculum.
Education Ministry leadership highlighted that over 9,000 Institution's Innovation Councils (IICs) operational across universities under the National Education Policy 2020 (NEP 2020) have incubated more than 18,000 student-led startups and catalyzed record domestic patent filings by faculty and undergraduate researchers.
The evaluation methodology of the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF launched in 2015 across five weighted parameters: Teaching, Learning & Resources; Research and Professional Practice; Graduation Outcomes; Outreach and Inclusivity; and Perception), the components of Atal Innovation Mission (ATLs, Atal Incubation Centres, and ACICs), and the statutory Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF Act 2023 with a ₹50,000 crore corpus) are foundational syllabus areas for UGC NET Paper-I and UPSC Civil Services (GS-II & GS-III).