Ahmedabad, April 26: The Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, today decided to go ahead and raise fees despite opposition from government representatives at its board meeting.

Faculty members said if the Centre later forced a rollback, it would amount to an assault on the institute’s autonomy and trigger a “furore”.

“The collective view of the board was to implement (the hike) as there is so much merit in the income-based fee structure we have designed,” institute director Samir Barua said after today’s board meeting.

The B-school will release its admission list on May 1, but candidates from the Other Backward Classes must wait another two weeks. The institute will admit 314 students — 64 more than last year — including 17 OBC candidates.

At the board meeting, the two government officials, S.K. Roy and R.K. Sinha, are believed to have advised the institute to roll back the announced fee hike, or at least put it off till the review committee handed in its final report.

The R.C. Bhargava committee, which is reviewing the IIMs’ functioning and will suggest the fees for each, is to submit the report to the Centre “sometime in June”. The academic session starts at the end of June.

IIM Ahmedabad had announced a fee increase from Rs 2 lakh to Rs 5.5 lakh for first-year students and from Rs 2.3 lakh to Rs 6 lakh for the second year. The hike was the highest among the IIMs.

Barua, however, cited how his institute was offering lower fees — even freeships — to needy students. Only students from families that earn Rs 6 lakh or more a year have to pay the fees in full.

“Our fee structure is not flat” unlike the other IIMs, he said. “Our graded fee structure has elements of freeship and scholarship.”

Under an agreement with the institute, five banks are to provide loans to needy students on easy terms, Barua said. He added that even two students could stand guarantors for each other.

Barua said that despite the hike, the average fee would be around Rs 4 lakh per student because non-creamy-layer OBC candidates were likely to avail themselves of the freeship.

IIM Calcutta has deferred its fee increase till the review committee hands in its final report.

The Ahmedabad institute, however, argues that “each B-school is independent, has an independent board and a different fee structure”.

The B-school does not expect human resource minister Arjun Singh to ask for a rollback after the review committee hands in its report.

“It is unlikely because when the new fee structure was finalised on March 29, the government representatives were present at the board meeting,” a professor said. But if Arjun does so, there would be “resistance and a furore”.

When the ministry had, during the National Democratic Alliance’s tenure, ordered all IIMs to lower their fees from the prevailing Rs 1.5 lakh to Rs 30,000, “it had sparked a debate on autonomy”, the professor added.

The board meeting approved the institute’s decision to implement 6 per cent OBC reservation this year.

Next year, the quota will be raised to 15 per cent while in 2010-11, the full 27 per cent OBC reservation will be implemented.