‘Proposed IIM council will just be a coordinating body’

Amid controversy over the government's move to bring IIMs under an umbrella body, the HRD Ministry Wednesday said the proposed IIM council will be only a "coordinating" unit which will not have powers to take any decision.

Higher Education Secretary Ashok Thakur said a final shape to the proposed legislation to bring IIMs under an umbrella body is likely to be given when HRD Minister M M Pallam Raju meets IIM directors and chairpersons at Kozhikode during the recess of budget session of Parliament.

Both the minister and the secretary were reacting to a query about the open opposition by the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIM-A) to the proposed legislation.

"... This will be a coordinating body and a forum to discuss. Not like the IIT Council. IIT Council has real powers. This is a coordinating body," Thakur told reporters.

He said there had been lots of discussions on the matter and "a consensus draft has been arrived at". Only some faculty and chairman of IIM Ahmedabad had raised some objection to it.

IIM-A Governing Council chairman A M Naik had said that proposed legislation to bring IIMs under an umbrella body, would curtail its autonomy and slow down the institute's effort to take it to the next level of globalisation.

The proposed legislation seeks to confer the IIMs the status of institutes of national importance empowering them to award degrees instead of diplomas and establishment of an IIM Council similar to the Council for the IITs and pave way for appointment of more government directors in IIMs boards.

Official sources said it was not the HRD Ministry which was trying to "thrust" the bill and it was the directors of the IIMs who wanted to push the legislation to make their Post Graduate Diploma in Management an internationally valid degree. Raju rejected reports that the IIM-Ahmedabad director may get an annual pay package of Rs 1 crore. "No such proposal is there," he said.

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