The Indian Institutes of Technology will soon have foreign students as well as faculty. Union Human resource Devolpment Minister Kapil Sibal while talking to reporters after a nearly three hour long meeting of the Council of IITs, said the decisions are being taken to bring IITs at par with the international institutes .These institutes will be conducting medical courses. The Minister said that the number of foreign students will be limited to 25 percent and only for the post graduate courses. For the faculty, Sibal said that consultations will be held with the home ministry to decide the modalities.The total number of foreign faculty will be capped at 10 percent. The minister also informed that these admissions will not affect the present number of Indian students in the institutes. In another major decision, the minister said that medicine and medical research will be added to the field of IITs.The minister said that the decision was taken as the field of medicine involves large number of engineering techniques, so the need for having medicine course at IITs was felt. He clarified that while MCI approval will be needed for awarding medical degrees, it will not be needed for the research in the allied fields related to medical technology. He said that a new Mechanism is being devised for adopting a new approach to common entrance test. The objective the minister added is to discourage the Private coaching institutes.