MUMBAI/NEW DELHI: For the first time, Indian technical institutions have found place among the top 50 in QS World University Ranking by subject, with IIT-Bombay and IIT-Delhi occupying the 44th and 47th rank, respectively, this year in engineering & technology.India also improved its presence in the top 100 list with five institutions featuring this year as against three in last year’s rankings. In the arts and humanities category, Jawaharlal Nehru University improved its ranking from 166 to 164 among the top 500 universities with the University of Delhi too featuring among the top 250 in this category.Massachusetts Institute of Technology is at pole position for the eighth year in a row. In the second and third positions are Stanford and Cambridge, respectively. Delhi has the most number of institutions from India among the top 200 with IIT-Delhi and DU again featuring in the social science & management category.AIIMS has been ranked 231 in life science & medicine category, improving its rank from 338 in 2019.IIM-Ahmedabad and IIM-Bangalore rank in the 51-100 band for business & management studies. Globally, Harvard, INSEAD and London Business School occupy the top three places. With design technology picking up pace, the National Institute of Design ranked in the 101-150 band. The Royal College of Art, UK, topped the charts in this category.In terms of overall ranks, IIT-B occupies the 152nd position, 10 spots higher as compared to last year. IIT-Delhi comes next at the 182nd (172 in 2019) place, followed closely by the Indian Institute of Science at 184th. Among traditional universities, DU is ranked 474, followed by Hyderabad and Jadavpur. The Universities of Mumbai and Pune remain in the 801-1001 band of rankings.Union HRD minister Ramesh Pokhriyal said: “It is a significant achievement of our premier engineering institutions, which has made India proud. This is the result of continuous efforts by the government to promote an environment of research and innovation.”“Our students and faculty members are our key strength. It is their dedication and hard work that have got us where we are today,” IIT-B director Subhasis Chaudhuri said.IIT-D director V Ramgopal Rao said: “We are very happy to see a significant improvement in our rankings. This is a result of the various measures we have taken in the institute on boosting the research ecosystem, bettering teacher-student ratio and strengthening our connect with external stakeholders in the last three years. The number of international students has gone up to 130, most of them pursuing their masters and PhD.”IIT-Delhi has also started several interdisciplinary research projects, pushing their score on research impact, he said, adding a dozen new centres of excellence have come up on the campus.Delhi University vice-chancellor Yogesh Tyagi said, “DU is the premier university of the nation and it is heartening that it not only features in all the five lists of the latest ranking but has made significant progress since last year.”Quacquarelli Symonds Limited subject rankings are based on research quality, academic reputation and accomplishments besides graduate employment.