Kurien men shut out 3 directors

The board meeting, held before the institute’s 24th annual convocation. began on a stormy note when three members—Bakul Dholakia, IIM-A director, Hasmukh Shah, former chairman of IPCL, and Vijay Mahajan, an industrialist—said they were not allowed inside the campus.

These three are known to be against Kurien holding a lifetime position at IRMA. Kurien had sacked IRMA director K Prathap Reddy on April 7.

Among the board members allowed in were Kurien, professors Vishwa Vallabh and Haribandhu Panda, State representative Vipul Mitra, Central nominee J K Mahapatra, Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation chairman B M Vyas, IRMA acting director L K Vaswani, Neelima Khaitan and National Dairy Development Board chairman Amrita Patel.

The drama was a sequel to Thursday’s letter from Vaswani, asking five board members not to attend today’s meeting to approve students’ diplomas. Besides Dholakia, Shah and Mahajan, those told to keep off were V Ramachandran and Father Abraham—both didn’t turn up.

Within 15 minutes of the meeting, Patel, who virtually leads the anti-Kurien lobby, walked out with four others. After the convocation, they joined the three waiting at the gates to hold an impromptu press conference.

‘‘We are not equipped to deal with such behaviour,’’ said Dholakia. ‘‘We are not gatecrashing.’’

Shah said, ‘‘We are not people without an identity. We cannot comment on this indecency. If the chairman’s conduct is unbecoming, as you have seen today, it needs to be examined all the more.’’

‘‘Who is Vaswani?’’ asked Mahajan. ‘‘Vaswani, whom the board does not recognise, cannot write to us. It’s the board that appoints a director. Neither can a director be removed by the chairman. Kurien is behaving with the presumption that we are against him just because our views do not gel. Our generation has grown up worshipping him. He should not forget basic decency,’’ said Mahajan.

Patel joined the others in calling Friday’s meeting illegal and raising doubts about the validity of diplomas granted. They argued that the chairman was not authorised to appoint someone as an acting director.

Responding to Kurien’s comment that the person he had groomed had turned against him, Patel said, ‘‘This is not the same Kurien now. He has lost his independence and depends on inappropriate persons for guidance.’’

Asked to comment on today’s incident, Kurien said, ‘‘I had to do that in the interest of conducting the convocation smoothly. I must manage the function and if it involves exclusion of some people, I have to do that.’’

Kurien and his supporters have been maintaining that the five who were told not to attend the meeting have ceased to be board members from February 15 this year on expiry of their two-year term.