Calcutta, Feb. 20: The Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, has raised fees for new students from Rs 4 lakh to Rs 9 lakh.

The fee for the class of 2008-10 has been formally fixed at Rs 7 lakh, which means existing first-year students have to add another Rs 4 lakh each to the Rs 3 lakh they had paid at the time of admission.

The 2007-09 batch was the last to be charged Rs 4 lakh for the two-year course. Batches from the 2009-11 course onwards will be charged the Rs 9-lakh fee.

“The decision to raise the fees to Rs 7 lakh for the 2008-10 session was taken before that batch took admission. It is just that we were waiting for the R.C. Bhargava Committee’s report,” Dinesh Varma, the chief administrative officer of IIM Calcutta, said.

“We decided to go ahead with the hike because Delhi still hasn’t taken a decision on the committee’s report,” he added.

The fees for new students were finalised today at a meeting of the board of governors. The last revision was in 2007, when the annual fee was raised from Rs 1.75 lakh to Rs 2 lakh.

“Our current annual cost per student is Rs 4 lakh. The increase in fees will help us break even if that cost remains the same,” Varma said.

A salve came in the form of an increase in the scholarship budget from Rs 75 lakh to Rs 1.5 crore.

“The quantum of scholarship for a student remains the same but more students will benefit from the larger budget,” the chief administrative officer said.

The institute also decided to increase the faculty strength from 88 to 120, subject to central clearance. “We will shortly take it up with the Union human resource development ministry,” Varma said.

The board, chaired by Ajit Balakrishnan, later discussed the Bhargava Committee’s report with the faculty members.

“Parts of the report seemed to lack clarity and that had led to reservations about accepting the recommendations. But Bhargava and the chairman of IIM Calcutta cleared the faculty’s doubts. The faculty will discuss the report and submit relevant recommendations by April,” Varma said.

The Rs 3-lakh hike in fees for the 2008-10 batch would have been implemented last year had the committee led by Bhargava, former chief executive officer of Maruti Udyog, not asked all the IIMs to “withhold” any proposed rise.