IIMs split in rift with HRD ministry

 The bone of contention is a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) drafted more than a year back by the Ministry of Human Resources Development. In the draft, three smaller IIMs put their sign of approval, while the three big players had not yet agreed to the conditions of the MoU.

 Following this, the unity as being stressed by the directors may belie the actual situation.

 The MoU lays down the conditions that none of the IIMs will be able to retain a corpus of over Rs 25 crore and will need to inform the Ministry in advance about their future plans.

 It was sent to the six directors about a year back by the ministry, following which IIM-Kozikode, IIM-Lucknow and the youngest of the lot, IIM-Indore, signed on the MoU and returned back the copies to Delhi.

 Interestingly, the IIMs at Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Kolkata have a corpus of over Rs 100 crore. On the other hand, IIM-Indore and IIM-Kozikode do not have any significant corpus. IIM-Lucknow, the oldest among the three, has a corpus of only Rs 5 crore.