IIM: Round One to Joshi

SC questions basis for high fees

Supreme Court delivered a blow to those who opposed the decision to slash the fees of IIMs.

The apex court yesterday said the institutes should not be accessible only to the affluent and sought to know the basis for charging an annual fee of Rs 1.5 lakh per student.

Hearing a public interest litigation filed by three petitioners, a bench comprising Chief Justice VN Khare and Justice SH Kapadia also questioned their locus standi before adjourning the hearing till February 27.

"Who are you, what is your locus?" the Bench asked. "If the IIMs are satisfied with the decision of the government, who are you to challenge it?"

The counsel for the petitioners, Ashok Desai, contended that the government, by reducing the fees, wanted to increase the dependence of these institutes on it for funds and thereby open avenues for interference.

However, the Bench said it would proceed with the petition only after the petitioners provided details of the components on the basis of which fees were being charged from the students, the subsidy from the government and the balance sheet of the institutions for the past six years.

For the government, Additional Solicitor-General Mukul Rohtagi justified the reduction in fees, saying very few students could afford such high fees. Rohtagi said the Centre gave a Rs 12 crore annual subsidy to the society running the IIMs.

Right at the start of the hearing, the Bench raised a series of questions on the petition filed by advocate Sandeep Parekh, an IIM student Saikat Sengupta and an IIM alumnus Anish Mathew requesting the court to strike down the February 5 decision of the Union Human Resources Development Minister, Murli Manohar Joshi, to reduce the fees and stop "government encroachment" in the academic affairs of these prestigious institutes.

Earlier this month, the ministry of human resources development had decided to drastically cut the tuition fees for the post-graduate programmes in the IIMs to Rs 30,000 per annum from around Rs 1.50 lakh per annum.

"We may take a view that for your regular expenditure you (IIMs) can charge the students the appropriate fee but not for capital expenditure. You cannot divert funds collected from students of one institute to another. If we find that you charge fees for diversion of funds for capital expenditure, we will not allow it," the Bench said.

Joshi sees vindication

Union Human Resources Development Minister Murli Manohar Joshi said the government's stand on fee cuts was likely to be vindicated by the apex court. He said the direction in which his ministry was moving "is likely to be vindicated". Joshi also dismissed the suggestions that there would be government interference in the running of the institutes.