India's top academic institutions, the Indian Institute of Management and Indian Institute of Technology, may soon set up branches in other cities.

According to officials in the human resources development ministry, IIM Ahmedabad, for instance, proposes to offer its post-graduate management courses in Mumbai.

As does IIM Lucknow in Noida. IIM Ahmedabad is scouting for real estate in Mumbai, which is home to other reputed management institutes like the Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies and Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies.

The idea gained currency with the remarkable success of IIM Kolkata, which has a city branch offering part-time MBA courses. The city branch, which also offers executive development courses, has attracted a large number of students who have been placed well.

While IIM Lucknow refused to comment on the proposal to set up a centre in Noida, sources in IIM Ahmedabad could not be contacted.

The HRD ministry has recommended that the IITs and IIMs can branch out given the huge gap between the demand for quality higher education and its supply.

Last year, 105,000 students appeared for the common admission test for just 1,000 seats offered by the six IIMs in Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Kolkata, Lucknow, Indore and Kozhikode.

In fact, just one of every five students who appeared for an MBA entrance made it to one of the 850-odd institutes in the country. Nearly 450,000 students appeared for various management entrance examinations last year.

As far as the IITs are concerned, while 190,000 students wrote the joint entrance examination last year, 4,400 made it to one of the seven institutes.

The move, an HRD ministry official said, was intended to improve the standards of technical and professional education in the country.

"In recent years, engineering and business management institutes have mushroomed across the country, diluting, to some extent, the academic standards. With the IIMs and IITs increasing their reach we hope to stem this," he said.

The IIMs and IITs are likely to respond positively to the government's suggestion to branch out. "This will help the institutes in augmenting their revenues too," the official said. The centres will be fully funded and controlled by the respective IIM or IIT.

The mother institute will share the faculty with the city centres. These centres may offer only specialised courses. For instance, an IIM branch may just offer the post-graduate diploma in business management and not any of the part-time courses.

The procedure for admission to the city centres would be identical to that of the mother institutes. Further, there will be no specific quota for students in states where the new branches will be set up.