NEW DELHI : In good news for MBA aspirants, the government today cleared the proposal for the setting up of six new IIMs in the country, which will start offering courses from the coming academic session itself.The new IIMs will be located at Visakhapatnam (Andhra Pradesh), Bodh Gaya (Bihar), Sirmaur (Himachal Pradesh), Nagpur (Maharashtra), Sambalpur (Odisha) and Amritsar (Punjab).Each institute will start with an intake of 140 students for the post-graduate course, the flagship programme of the IIMs, admission for which will be through CAT."It is expected that the annual intake will increase to reach a level of 560 students by the end of seven years," the government said in a release here after the Union Cabinet gave its nod to the proposal.In his budget speech in July last year, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had announced a proposal for the setting up of five new IIMs. In addition, an IIM was also proposed for Andhra Pradesh in keeping with the AP Re-organisation Act, 2014.The Cabinet also decided to meet the persistent demand of the people of western Odisha for the IIM to be set up in Sambalpur. As per the earlier proposal, the campus was to come up in state capital Bhubaneswar.The HRD Ministry had earlier finalised the existing IIMs which would be mentoring the new ones.There are at present 13 IIMs in the country.