Without climbing down, IIMs take high ground

The bench headed by Chief Justice V N Khare accepted the adjournment request even after IIMA and its Bangalore counterpart declared their intention to charge an annual fee of Rs 1.5 lakh in the teeth of the Government’s order to reduce that to Rs 30,000.

Since the bench did not object to their open defiance of the fee cut order, and since the Government itself kept quiet about it in the court today, the Ahmedabad and Bangalore institutes are all set to intimate the existing fee of Rs 1.5 lakh to the incoming class around May 8.

This will, however, create an anomalous situation as the other four IIMs will charge 80% less fee in keeping with the resolutions they have already passed in favour of the Government order of February 5. The counsel for IIMA, senior advocate Anil Divan, said that if the ongoing dialogue does not resolve the fee cut controversy by the next hearing of the PIL towards July-end, then the institute would file an independent petition.

Clearly, the strategy of the Ahmedabad institute, which is the oldest and most prestigious of the IIMs, is to assert its right to deal with the fee cut and the related autonomy issues on its own—and in its own way.

The sidelining of the PIL became evident when at the beginning of today’s hearing Divan cut short the counsel for the PIL petitioners, senior advocate Harish Salve, and said that IIMA wanted the litigation to be kept in abeyance in veiw of its ongoing talks with the Government. This led to a spat between the two senior advocates as Salve called it a change in IIMA’s stand from what it stated in its affidavit. He even alleged that this change was another sign of the Government’s ‘‘arm-twisting’’ of the IIMs. Salve sought to substantiate his charge by reading out several excerpts from IIMA’s affidavit, including the recorded proceedings of its society’s meeting of March 9 where the HRD Ministry’s joint secretary, V S Pandey, threatened to take over if the institute did not fall in line with the fee cut order. But as the other IIMs readily agreed with IIMA’s dialogue initiative and even expressed a willingness to join it, the bench adjourned the hearing saying it would not let the PIL come in the way of a resolution outside the court. The Government counsel, additional solicitor general Mukul Rohtagi, welcomed the dialogue process but reiterated that the PIL should all the same be dimissed on the ground of locus standi. IIMA’s counsel disclosed that its chairman, N R Narayana Murthy, had formed a negotiating committee comprising Jerry Rao, visiting faculty and chairman of NASSCOM, B H Jajoo, faculty and board member, and J R Verma, faculty member. The committee has already held its first meeting with higher education secretary S C Tripathy in the HRD Ministry. When the PIL comes up next in July, the IIMs and HRD Ministry are required to report the results of their discussions.