4 IIMs get funds to implement fee cut

Govt ignores IIM-Ahmedabad and IIM-Bangalore.

As the boards of most of the six Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) have agreed to implement the Union human resources development ministry order on fee cut, the ministry has sanctioned funds to meet the shortfall to be faced by the institutes following the implementation of the order.

But there is no luck for the two big IIMs""IIM-Ahmedabad and IIM-Bangalore""which preferred not to implement the order till dialogues with the ministry are over and the public interest litigation (PIL) pending in the Supreme Court is finalised and the court takes any decision on the fee cut issue.

Significantly, while IIM-Calcutta Board of Governors decided to implement the fee cut order despite oppositions from the faculty council of the institute and few other Board members, the institute has received a sanction letter for Rs 4 crore as a non-Plan grant, which is to be used to meet the shortfall of funds. The faculty council has moved the Calcutta High Court against the order.

"The institute is yet to receive the cheque from the ministry. But it has received the sanction letter for Rs 4 crore, which came following the Board's resolution to follow the ministry order. The amount is to be used to cover the impact of the fee cut order," Shekhar Chaudhuri, director of IIM-C told Business Standard.

In another development, IIM-C may decide for signing the controversial Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the MHRD while the two other bigger Institutes, IIM-B and IIM-A so far has no such intention.

IIM-Lucknow, IIM-Indore and IIM-Kozikode have already signed the MoU with the Government. Interestingly, IIM-C did not receive any funds for the fiscal year 2003-04 while funds to IIM-C in previous stood at Rs 5.53 crore, less than Rs 11.82 crore granted during the fiscal year 2000-01.

The Rs 4 crore of non-plan grant which has reached recently, however is meant for the fiscal year 2004-05.

In the line of IIM-C, IIM-L also has received a similar non-plan grant from the MHRD for Rs 4 crore to cover the differences of fee cut and IIM-L was the first among the six Institutes to agree with the fee cut order.

"After IIM-L Board informed the MHRD about its willingness to implement the fee cut order, the Ministry promptly assured it to meet the shortfall of funds and accordingly, the sanction letter was received recently.

However, we are not sure yet whether the Finance Ministry has approved any additional fund to MHRD and subsequent to that, MHRD has made these sanctions," said a source close to the Institute. Director, Devi Singh, was not available for his comment, inspite of repeated attempts.

Meanwhile, sources close to the development told Business Standard told that two other Institutes, IIM-Kozikode and IIM-Indore also have received sanction from the MHRD recently but the amount is lesser than that of IIM-C and IIM-L.

"May be because those two Institutes have smaller batches in PGP courses and for that reason, the fee cut order will not impact them as high as IIM-C or IIM-A or even IIM-B. So naturally they have been granted lesser funds," said source.

IIM-B and IIM-A which also did not receive any funds from the ministry during the last fiscal year, do not feature of the preferred list of the institutes of the ministry.

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Managing IIMs

• IIM-Calcutta has received a sanction letter for Rs 4 crore as a non-Plan grant, which is to be used to meet the shortfall of funds
• The faculty council of IIM-C has moved the Calcutta High Court against the order
• IIM-B and IIM-A are yet to take a decision on signing the MoU with the ministry