Panaji: Within a week of obtaining Centre’s nod to establish a permanent campus for IIT Goa at Farmagudi, the state cabinet on Wednesday decided to transfer five lakh sqm of govt land to IIT Goa. Chief minister Pramod Sawant said an additional two lakh sqm of adjoining privately owned land has also been identified for acquisition for the project.The CM also said that the existing IIT hostel will be transferred to Goa Engineering College (GEC) and that the GEC’s land will be handed over to IIT Goa.“The additional land that will be acquired will be handed over to IIT Goa and GEC,” Sawant said.The Farmagudi site is the fifth location identified for the project. Several earlier proposals were either rejected by Centre’s site selection committee or ran into local opposition.Operational since 2016, IIT Goa has functioned from a temporary campus at GEC for nearly a decade. Multiple earlier proposals either failed to get approval from the Union education ministry’s site selection committee or drew protests from local communities.Last year, state govt abandoned plans to set up the campus on over 14 lakh sq m of comunidade land at Codar in Ponda after strong protests from residents.Before that, govt had considered land at the site of the Sanjivani sugar factory in Dharbandora. A senior govt official said the site remains under consideration for institutional development, though no decision has been taken.In Jan 2024, the Union education ministry approved a nearly 10.5 lakh sq m site at Rivona in Sanguem, but the proposal was later dropped due to issues related to the title of the land.An earlier site in Sanguem had also been rejected by Centre on grounds of unsuitability and faced opposition from farmers cultivating the land.The project had earlier been proposed at Melauli in Sattari, where sustained protests culminated in clashes between protesters and police in Jan 2021. Shortly thereafter, the chief minister announced that the project would be shifted, citing public sentiment.