NAGPUR: The Devendra Fadnavis government on Wednesday gave Maharashtra and Nagpur an early New Year gift by announcing an IIM in the city that could start as early as the next academic session.Senior officials said the IIM will begin operations from Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology, which will charge Rs 6 lakh a month to rent out two buildings. A campus is planned at Mihan near the airport.Higher and technical education minister Vinod Tawde made a formal declaration in the legislative council on Wednesday while speaking on a bill to clear two private universities. According to prescribed standards for Indian Institutes of Management, Nagpur emerged as the best location in all aspects, he said.Addressing the media later, CM Fadnavis confirmed that the institution, proposed in the Union Budget this year, was likely to begin operations from the next (2015-16) academic session. The final decision on the launch would be taken by the Union human resources ministry after the government sent its proposal.The CM, himself from Nagpur, has been taking a special interest in the IIM project and in November finalized 293 acres of Maharashtra Airport Development Corporation land at Mouza Dahegaon in the non-SEZ area of Mihan (Multi-modal International Cargo Hub and Airport at Nagpur) for setting up the IIM’s permanent campus, the officials said.Prime Minister Narendra Modi is likely to perform the ground-breaking ceremony of the IIM campus on January 4, along with that for the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in Mihan, they said.Academicians and government officials said the announcement would add a new feather in Nagpur’s cap. “It would help the city get the status of an education hub. Nagpur is the most deserving place for the IIM,” said joint director of technical education in Nagpur Gulab Thakre.Clearly under the CM’s instructions, Nagpur’s administrative machinery moved at lightning speed to finalize the IIM proposal and dispatched it to the principal secretary of higher and technical education department. Thakre, along with collector Abhishek Krishna, were instrumental in drafting the proposal as well as inspecting and finalizing the makeshift facility for starting the prestigious institution at VNIT within a day on November 20.The institute comes as a major victory for local legislators as those from other centres like Mumbai, Pune and Aurangabad had been lobbying for it. In fact, MLAs from Aurangabad, cutting across party lines, had even campaigned with banners in front of Vidhan Bhavan.