IIMs to submit fee structure on June 6

The directors of all the six Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) will meet at IIM, Ahmedabad, on June 6 to draft a common fee structure, which will be submitted to the HRD ministry ministry on June 8.

It is learnt that the HRD secretary, S C Tripathi, who has been co-ordinating between the IIMs and the new Union minister, Arjun Singh, will be handling the Charter, and if he agrees with the new proposals from the IIMs, the Charter will be tabled by the directors of the IIMs before their respective boards between June 12 and June 20.

After that, the IIMs are supposed to have a final meeting with the HRD minister.

The meeting of the six directors is expected to be a stormy session as there are enough differences of opinion among themselves. The differences of opinion was between Devi Singh, director of IIM-Lucknow, Bakul Dholakia, director of IIM-A and Prakash Apte, director of IIM-Bangalore.

"While Singh was the first director among all six to agree with the order of the earlier ministry, headed by Murli Manohar Joshi, and implemented the fee-cut order, it were Dholakia and Apte who decided to oppose the order vehemently. This was in addition to their earlier differences of opinion on the issue of signing an MoU with the ministry, in which though the IIM-L signed as acceptance, the two bigger Institutes denied to sign. Singh, known to be a close man Joshi, may disagree this time with his counterparts, mainly from IIM-A and IIM-B to maintain status quo in the fee structure and these differences should be patched up before the matter goes finally to the ministry and Singh," said a source close to development.

The are possibilities of differences of opinion between director of IIM-Kozikode, Krishna Kumar, and those of IIM-B, IIM-A.

Sources also said that Shekhar Choudhuri, director of IIM-C, also may voice the opinions of Dholakia and Apte, which may not be liked by his counterparts at IIM-L and IIM-K.

"Not only that even if IIM-C director decides in favour of maintaining status quo in fees for the new session, he may face opposition from his chairman, Yogi Deveshwar, who earlier favoured the fee cut order of Joshi and thus earned irk of the faculty council of the institute."

"It was only N R Narayanamurthy, chairman of IIM-A, and S M Dutta, chairman of IIM-B, decided against the ministry's order issued on February 5 which caused the storm," said the source.

Meanwhile, a meeting of the board of governors of IIM-A has been scheduled on June 19, while the boards of IIM-C and IIM-B are scheduled to meet on June 12 and June 20, respectively. The boards of IIM-L, IIM-K and IIM-I are expected to meet during the same period.