While presenting the Union Budget 2025-26 in the Parliament today, the Union Minister for Finance and Corporate Affairs, Smt. Nirmala Sitharaman proposed various development measures for nurturing innovation.

The Union Finance Minister announced to set up Fifty thousand Atal Tinkering Labs in Government schools in next 5 years to cultivate the spirit of curiosity and innovation, and foster a scientific temper among young minds. The Union Budget also proposes to provide Broadband connectivity to all Government secondary schools and primary health centres in rural areas under the Bharatnet project.

On higher education, the Union Budget 2025-26 states that total number of students in 23 IITs has increased 100 per cent from 65,000 to 1.35 lakh in the past 10 years. Additional infrastructure will be created in the 5 IITs started after 2014 to facilitate education for 6,500 more students. Hostel and other infrastructure capacity at IIT, Patna will also be expanded.

With the aim to help students understand their subjects better, Smt. Nirmala Sitharaman has proposed to implement a Bharatiya Bhasha Pustak Scheme to provide digital-form Indian language books for school and higher education.

The Union Finance Minister also announced to set up five National Centres of Excellence for skilling with global expertise and partnerships to equip youth with the skills required for “Make for India, Make for the World” manufacturing. The partnerships will cover curriculum design, training of trainers, a skills certification framework, and periodic reviews.

The Union Budget also announced to set up a Centre of Excellence in Artificial Intelligence for education with a total outlay of Rs 500 crore.

While presenting the Budget, Smt. Nirmala Sitharaman announced to allocate Rs 20,000 crore to implement private sector driven Research, Development and Innovation. In the next five years, under the PM Research Fellowship scheme, provision of ten thousand fellowships for technological research in IITs and IISc with enhanced financial support is also proposed in the Budget.

For related information on Skill development, Click here- https://pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2098551

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NB/KS/AS