Status: The Finance Minister in her 2022 Budget speech spoke about designating five academic institutions as centres of excellence in urban planning and design. After examining proposals from 28 institutes, the government has finalised four academic institutions as Centres of Excellence— CEPT University in Ahmedabad, IIT-Kharagpur, NIT-Calicut, and School of Planning and Architecture in Delhi. Each of these institutes will receive Rs 250 crore for research, capacity building and developing India-specific knowledge to support cities in developing infrastructure in a planned manner. i ii