States join coordination push to widen access to research equipment
The first state nodal-officer meeting for I-STEM focused on bringing more publicly funded laboratories and instruments into a shared-access system.
The Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser convened the first State Governments Nodal Officers Meeting for the I-STEM portal on 21 September, with officers from 23 states and four Union Territories.
The government says the platform lists more than 31,000 scientific instruments across nearly 4,000 institutions and has over 65,000 registered users. The meeting focused on adding state universities, laboratories and research facilities while widening access for researchers, startups, small businesses and industry.
Why it matters
Better visibility and shared use of costly equipment could expand research capacity beyond well-funded institutions and improve the return on public capital investment.
SCULTRA point of view
Platform scale should be judged through active facilities, completed bookings, geographic and institutional access, equipment uptime, transparent pricing, turnaround time, user satisfaction and research outcomes, not instrument and registration totals alone.
Limitations
The figures are government and platform-reported. Registered users are not the same as active users, and the release gives no state-level inventory, booking volume, successful-access rate, downtime, fee data, service standard, utilisation baseline or binding commitments from the meeting.
Source: Press Information Bureau / Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser and I-STEM, 21 September 2026.