The IIM Lucknow building

April 21: A panel reviewing the functioning of the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) has urged the business schools to refrain from raising fees this year, but the institutes have not made up their mind whether to heed the recommendation.

Senior officials from the IIMs called the recommendation “non-binding” but said they were studying the panel’s plea.

Facing flak from Parliament over the IIM fee hike, the human resource development ministry today indirectly accused the institutes of ignoring the recommendation for a freeze in fees.

Barraged by six independent questions on the fee raise, junior education minister D. Purandeswari revealed that the IIM review committee had asked the institutes to roll back the hike days after it was announced.

“The review committee has submitted an interim report asking the IIMs to defer any increase in fee,” Purandeswari told the Rajya Sabha.

The IIMs had each announced fee hikes — ranging from a 60 per cent jump to a near three-fold rise — in March. IIM Ahmedabad announced the new fee on March 29, followed the next day by IIMs in Kozhikode and Indore. IIM Lucknow announced its structure on April 1.

Education minister Arjun Singh expressed his “concerns” over the hike to IIM Ahmedabad chairman Vijaypat Singhania on April 3 but the industrialist returned determined to maintain the hike.

The next day — April 4 — Arjun found himself armed with a new weapon. The review committee, headed by former Maruti chief R.C. Bhargava, submitted its interim report, asking the IIMs to “keep fees at the level of December 2007”, till the panel filed its final report.

The ministry issued copies of the interim report to the directors of the six IIMs. The report asked the IIMs to peg the fees at Rs 3 lakh or less a year.

IIM Calcutta had earlier announced a first-year fee of Rs 3 lakh and a final year charge of Rs 4 lakh — it charged about Rs 2 lakh each year last term. But the day after receiving the panel’s recommendations, it decided to reconsider the fee hike. On April 5, IIM Calcutta put the Rs 4-lakh hike for the second year on hold.

The IIMs at Indore (Rs 3 lakh for the first year), Kozhikode (Rs 3 lakh) and Lucknow (Rs 2.5 lakh) meet the criterion set by the review panel for the first year of management courses.

But officials at the IIMs in Ahmedabad (Rs 5.50 lakh) and Bangalore (Rs 4 lakh) said they had no plans to revise the announced fee hike.

“We have been through the review panel recommendations and are still studying them, but we understand that the panel’s suggestions are non-binding,” a senior IIM Ahmedabad official said.

A member of the IIM Bangalore board said the institute had not discussed any plans to roll back the fee hike. But he also added that the institute was studying the panel recommendations.

Quota legal threat

Anti-quota group Youth for Equality today threatened to renew its challenge to the government’s implementation of OBC quotas, both legally and on the streets, reviving images of battles fought in the past two summers over reservations, reports our correspondent.

But unlike on previous occasions, doctors — who form the backbone of the anti-reservation protests — will not go on strike, YFE office bearers said after a general body meeting in Delhi today.

The anti-reservation group has demanded that the government use the latest available national census — of 2001 — to determine which communities are economically and educationally backward. At present, the government is planning to use the 1931 census to determine which communities come under the category of Other Backward Classes.

YFE is also planning to challenge the decision to implement OBC quotas in postgraduate courses.