JODHPUR: Battling hard with acute faculty crunch, IIT-Jodhpur has now decided to encourage new faculty recruits by offering a starting salary of Rs 25 lakhs per annum."In our endeavours to recruit new faculty members for IIT-Jodhpur, we have decided to give a head start to every new recruit and have offered a start up grant of Rs 25 lakhs to every faculty on joining the IIT, which is highest among all the institutions around," Chairman of the Board of Governor, Goverdhan Mehta said.The Chairman, however, refused to divulge the modalities and details of various individual components in this starting grant of Rs 25 lakhs.Chairman Mehta was in Jodhpur to attend the second convocation ceremony of the institution.IIT-Jodhpur is short of nearly 40 faculty members, as the number of sanctioned posts were 90, but the figure has barely been able to cross the mark of 50.In addition to this, nearly two dozen faculty members have quit the institution in the past two years and the institution does not have even a single faculty member of Professor rank.Mehta admitted the high attrition rate among the faculty members of IIT-Jodhpur, and said various reasons were responsible for this phenomenon."Still, we are trying our best to fill all the vacant posts and that too without compromising on the quality of the faculties," he said.Director IIT, CVR Murti said that IIT-Jodhpur was in immediate need of Professors, Associate Professors and Assistant Professors in Computer Science and Engineering, Electric Engineering and Mechanical Engineering.Chairman Mehta also announced that IIT-Jodhpur has finally reached the stage of beginning the construction of its own building in Jodhpur."We have approved all the works and would now be floating tenders in next couple of weeks. The first phase of the construction would begin in the first week of October," said Mehta.To be completed in 5 phases, the first phase of construction will see an expenditure of Rs 350 crore and will be completed in 18 months, he said."We look forward to beginning of 2016 academic session from our own campus," he said.Currently, the institute is running from the premises hired from MBM Engineering College of Jodhpur since 2010.The foundation stone for the construction of IIT campus was laid on April 16 last year by former minister of Human Resource Development M M Pallam Raju, but the work could not progress due to various reasons, which included stepping down of the then Director P K Kalra and subsequent alterations in the master plan of the campus.