What he started from just two rented rooms in 1992-93, involving an initial investment of Rs 5,000, with merely 12 students and two employees, has grown into a sprawling engineering university spread over 36 sq km in Bhubaneswar, which is currently at the centre of a raging row over the suicide of a 20-year-old Nepalese student. The Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology (KIIT)’s founder Achyuta Samanta, 61, is in the line of fire over this controversy, with leaders cutting across party lines demanding action against him.
The KIIT campus is on the boil since Kathmandu-resident Prakriti Lamsal was found dead in her hostel room on February 16. Police said she died by suicide. A 21-year-old student from Lucknow, Advik Srivastava, has been arrested in the case on charges of abetment. The situation escalated after the university asked the students from Nepal to vacate hostels, with the authorities also allegedly assaulting some of them physically.
The entire incident, which set off a diplomatic crisis between the two countries, has severely dented Samanta’s image of a social entrepreneur, who claims to have helped thousands of tribal kids by giving them access to free education.
Samanta was only 25 when he set up an Industrial Training Institute (ITI) and named it KIIT because of his “fascination” with the letter “K”, which he considers his “lucky charm”, according to his close associates. In the beginning of his career, Samanta, who completed his Master’s in chemistry from the Utkal University, worked as a junior lecturer in a government-aided college in Bhubaneswar.
Samanta’s varsity classmate Rabi Behera said he was a “very hardworking and bright student”. “The Rs 5,000 with the help of which he started KIIT was also a bank loan. But he was very determined to do things and his mother was his inspiration through his life,” Behera, who now heads the Samajwadi Party (SP)’s Odisha unit, told The Indian Express.
For someone, who lost his father at the age of four and grappled with various struggles, Samanta not only turned the KIIT into a success story but also set up its twin institution, Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (KISS), in 1993. Former MP Pradyumna Bal, a prominent Odisha journalist, helped Samanta in establishing the KIIT.
Samanta claims to have provided free residential education to over 20,000 poor tribal children from various parts of Odisha through the KISS, which earned him the image of being a “social reformer”.
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According to veteran journalist Pradosh Patnaik, who is known to be close to Samanta, the KISS helps Samanta to get national and international funding for his institutions.
KIIT became a full-fledged engineering college in 1997. Samanta then started expanding its campus by taking a patch of land from the state government.
In 2007, Samanta added many new courses in the KIIT, including law, biotechnology, medical sciences, dental sciences, nursing, film, media, fashion, as well as an international school. According to the university’s website, KIIT now has around 40,000 students from across India and 2,000 international students from 65 countries. About 40 per cent of the university’s international students are from Nepal.
Several observers, who have seen Samanta’s rise, say that the KIIT was a self-financed institution from the outset, availing bank loans to build its infrastructure besides having several international collaborations. “Samanta knows the art of managing everything and everyone,” say one of them. There are also allegations against him of hiring for the KIIT the relatives of influential people to facilitate his business dealings.
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Known for his national and global connections, Samanta has so far hosted over two dozen Nobel laureates at the KIIT and the KISS. Also, among the prominent visitors to the KIIT include former President A P J Abdul Kalam, ex-Prime Minister Manmohan Singh (to attend the Indian Science Congress in 2012), former Chief Justice of India P Sathasivam, scores of Union ministers, judges, former US Ambassador to India Richard Verma, among others.
KIIT officials said Samanta himself has got over 60 honorary doctorates from many universities from across the world.
Clad in a white shirt and blue trousers, his trademark outfit, Samanta had maintained distance from active politics until 2018, when he joined the Naveen Patnaik-led Biju Janata Dal (BJD), then the ruling party in Odisha, which nominated him to the Rajya Sabha.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the BJD fielded Samanta from Kandhamal, a region from where he has enrolled most of the tribal students of the KISS. He won the seat by about 1.5 lakh votes. But, in the 2024 polls, he lost his seat by over 21,000 votes, following which he announced retirement from politics.
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Despite being at the helm of an educational empire, Samanta, in his 2024 election affidavit, stated that he owns total assets worth only Rs 71.43 lakh.
His entrepreneurial journey has also been marked with setbacks, with the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG), in its report in 2012, alleging that the Idco, Odisha’s nodal agency for land acquisition, gave “undue benefits” of Rs 66.25 crore to the KIIT.
In June last year, the Union tribal affairs ministry directed the Odisha government to defer the process of “diversion”of over 4 hectares of forest land in favour of the KISS following complaints about its compliance to the Forest Rights Act.
Congress leader Taraprasad Bahinipati has demanded Samanta’s arrest over the Nepalese student’s suicide and the KITT staff’s alleged involvement in assaulting the student protesters demanding justice.
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While the BJP-led state government has claimed to have taken various steps to restore normalcy in the KITT campus while assuring stern action against the guilty, a section of BJP leaders has urged the government to take action against Samanta. The BJP’s Ekamra-Bhubaneswar MLA Babu Singh said Samanta managed to expand his empire because of his “influence” with the previous BJD government, demanding action against him.
BJD MLA Souvik Biswal said whoever is guilty in the KIIT death case should be punished as per law.
