Arjun Singh: Promise fulfilled

Shillong/Calcutta, Nov. 30: The seventh Indian Institute of Management will begin its first academic session next June on a temporary campus in Shillong that previously housed the North Eastern Hill University.

Union human resource development minister Arjun Singh will lay the foundation stone of the permanent campus of the IIM, named after former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, tomorrow.

Chief minister D.D. Lapang and Union minister for tribal affairs P.R. Kyndiah will be present at the ceremony.

“While construction of the permanent structure is going on, the institute will start functioning at the Mayurbhanj complex in Nongthymmai,” Rathindra Nath Datta, ex-chairman of PricewaterhouseCoopers (India), who has been appointed the chairman of the board of governors of the institute, said.

The Meghalaya government has provided 120 acres of land free of cost in the new satellite township of Mawdiangdiang, 20km from Shillong, for the permanent campus.

The institute will get a grant of Rs 120 crore for non-recurring expenditure over five years and Rs 45 crore for recurring expenditure over six years.

Ashok Kumar Dutta, who is at present the director of Indian Institute of Social Welfare and Business Management in Calcutta, is the frontrunner for the post of IIM director.

A post-graduate diploma course in business management will begin in June with an annual intake of 60 students in the first two years. This will be doubled in the third year and increased by another 60 in the sixth.

As in all IIMs, the common admission test will be the criteria for allocation of seats. The RG-IIM was, however, not mentioned in the CAT 2007 bulletin.

Apart from the management programme, the institute proposes to offer a fellowship programme in management, apart from management development programmes and courses in tourism and hospitality management.

After laying the foundation stone, Singh will inaugurate a convention centre at the Nehu complex and address a meeting of the vice-chancellors of the central universities of the Northeast in Guwahati. He will return to New Delhi on the same day.