New Delhi: As the country embarked upon setting up new IITs, IIMs and central universities, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday said attracting best talents for these premier institutions remains a problem.

“We must find ways of attracting the best talents as faculty in our premier institutions. We today face difficulty in finding top level professors and lecturers in the newly created IITs, IISERs and other such institutions,” he said.

Addressing the National Education Day function here to commemorate the birth anniversary of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, independent India’s first education minister, Singh said, “this state of affairs cannot be allowed to prevail.”

The government has started major expansion of higher education by opening eight new IITs and 15 central universities.

It has also been decided to set up six IIMs, 10 NITs, 20 IIITs and 6,000 model schools during the 11th Plan (2007-12).

Observing that efforts should be made to find ways to improve the quality of teachers, the Prime Minister asked the academics and planners to address this problem of deficiency in the quality of teaching in schools, colleges and universities.

Singh also said the country needed an additional ten lakh teachers to implement the Right To Education Act, which seeks to provide free and compulsory education in the 6-14 age group.