As many as 61 teachers of IIM Calcutta have written to the institute’s board of governors wondering whether it was prudent to call students of the MBA executive programme to the campus amid the Covid pandemic.

The 61 teachers — the Joka B-school’s current faculty strength is 82 — have expressed the fear that the students’ journey to and presence on the campus could trigger grave health consequences and alleged that they had not been consulted on the matter.

The letter — on behalf of IIM Calcutta Faculty Forum and addressed to the chairman of the institute’s board, Shri-krishna Kulkarni — have cited examples of Covid cases on the campuses of IIM Ahmedabad and IIT Kharagpur.

IIM Calcutta had on September 8 announced that it would call 62 students of the one-year residential MBA executive programme to the campus so they could use the Internet network there and attend online classes without disruption. The students have been attending online classes from home since April.

The letter to Kulkarni says: “You would be aware that recently IIT Kharagpur had to decide to vacate its hostels due to continuing spread of COVID-19. According to recent news reports, a student of the PGPX programme at IIM Ahmedabad who had been allowed to come into campus has tested positive for COVID-19. News like this has caused considerable anxiety to different stakeholders — campus residents, other faculty and staff who regularly visit campus for official work — who would be impacted by this decision.”

Raising questions about the absence of consultations on the matter, the teachers ask: “What steps did our institute take to ensure that stakeholders were consulted before taking this decision with potentially grave consequences for their health and safety?”

Metro contacted Kulkarni but he said he could not talk because he was busy at a meeting. He did not respond to text messages.

Repeated calls to director Anju Seth went unanswered. She, too, did not respond to text messages from this newspaper.

The IIM authorities had said on September 8: “Following the recent central and state government advisories and regulatory guidelines, the students will arrive on the campus in small batches to undertake quarantine in the campus hostel, while still attending classes online.”

The Unlock 4 guidelines issued by the home ministry on August 29 said the higher education institutions could reopen for research scholars and postgraduate students of technical and professional programmes requiring laboratory/experimental work.

“These will be permitted by the department of higher education in consultation with the ministry, based on the assessment of the situation, and keeping in view of the incidence of Covid-19 in the states/Union Territories,” says the guideline.

The IIM teachers have asked whether the decision to call the students to the campus was in accordance with the guidelines.