Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India (office: 15 August 1947 – 27 May 1964), initiated reforms to promote higher education, science, and technology in India. The Indian Institutes of Technology – conceived by a 22-member committee of scholars and entrepreneurs in order to promote technical education – was inaugurated on 18 August 1951 at Kharagpur in West Bengal by the minister of education Maulana Abul Kalam Azad. More IITs were soon opened in Bombay, Madras, Kanpur and Delhi as well in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Beginning in the 1960s, close ties with the Soviet Union enabled the Indian Space Research Organisation to rapidly develop the Indian space program and advance nuclear power in India even after the first nuclear test explosion by India on 18 May 1974 at Pokhran.