The government has amended the 34-year-old rules of University Grants Commission (UGC) to enable more private institutes get grants.

A senior official said the human resources development ministry has amended the UGC (Fitness of Institutions for Grants) Rules 1975.

The University Grants Commission (Fitness of Institutions for Grants) (Amendment) Rules, 2009 will enable UGC to relax one or more of its conditions for giving grants to private and unaided institutions in the country.

As per the earlier rules, private institutes that met certain criteria with regard to faculty and infrastructure got grants from UGC.

The criteria lays down that a private educational institute should have at least five departments each having one professor, two readers and three to four lecturers. They should have administrative and academic buildings.

“Now, even if certain institutes do not have such facilities and faculty, they can be considered for grants. The amended rules allows UGC to relax norms,” the official said.

The rules have been amended at a time when UGC is set to start a new scheme for one-time grants for private and unaided institutes. The scheme was discussed at the conference of state education secretaries at UGC on September 19.

As per the scheme, funds can be given to colleges that have not got any grants from the government so far. The grants can be spent on creating new facilities and starting new departments.

However, colleges and state governments will have to give matching grants for taking advantage of the scheme. A few thousand private and unaided institutions are expected to benefit from the scheme, the source said.

The government is also all set to start 374 colleges in educationally backward districts. The constituent colleges of certain universities can be considered under the scheme.