IIM visiting faculty, student, alumnus move SC on fee cut

A visiting faculty member, an alumnus and a second-year student of the Post-Graduate Programme (PGP) of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A), today filed a public interest litigation (PIL) in the Supreme Court challenging the recent order of the ministry of human resources development slashing the fees of all six IIMs by around 80 per cent.

The petition will be heard after 21 days. Once admitted, the Supreme Court may issue notices to all the three respondents mentioned in the petition""Human Resources Development Minister Murali Manohar Joshi, the secretary in the ministry and the joint secretary.

Sandeep Parekh, a senior advocate of the Supreme Court as also a visiting faculty member of IIM-A, initiated the process of filing the petition. Parekh was joined by Saikat Sengupta, a student of IIM-A and Anish Mathew, an IIM-A alumnus who now works at a private company in Chennai.

"I was shocked when I came to know about the ministry's order. This is an arbitrary and mala fide action. After a discussion with some people, Sengupta and Mathew joined me and we filed the PIL. In the PIL, we have requested the court to ask the ministry to reverse its order," Parekh told Business Standard.

The PIL also sought a stay on the operations of the ministry's order and requested the court to see so that the ministry does not take action in this regard till the PIL is heard and finalised.

In the PIL, the three petitioners, Parekh, Sengupta and Mathew, also claimed that though the ministry had indicated that its decision followed the recommendations of the U R Rao committee, the committee's chairman Rao himself has been misquoted by the ministry and this was substantiated by Rao himself, the petition said.

"This decision to cut the fees is not at all for the poor students, as claimed by the ministry. Rather, it is against the interests of all such premier institutions and students studying there and aspiring to study there. During 1992 on the basis of the Curien committee's recommendations, the government reduced the subsidy given to the IIMs and asked them to become self-dependent and remain autonomous. So the recent order also violates the recommendations of the Curien committee," Parekh said.

IIM-A director Bakul Dholakia could not be reached for comments on the development.