The Hindu Business Line : `It's a unanimous decision by IIMs'

Ahmedabad April 13 All the six Indian Institutes of Management in the country have decided to defer the publication of final list of admissions for the next academic year till April 21 in deference to the wishes of the Union Human Resources Development Ministry.

Speaking on behalf of all the six IIMs, the Director of IIM Ahmedabad, Prof Bakul Dholakia, said: "This is the maximum stretch we can give to the Government without disrupting the beginning of the next academic year."

If no further communication from the HRD Ministry was received or the Supreme Court's stay on the implementation of the OBC reservation quota not vacated till April 21, the IIMs would go ahead with the admission process "as per the last year's capacity" without implementing the OBC reservation quota and the consequent expansion of their intake capacity.

Denying that the IIMs were intending for any "confrontation" with the Union Government, Prof Dholakia said the decision to defer the admissions only up to April 21 was taken "unanimously" by the six directors through several rounds of teleconferencing during the last few days since the communication received from the HRD Ministry on April 6 asking the IIMs to defer admissions "till further communication" from the Centre.

The Ministry had promised to send the "further" communication "at the earliest" but so far there was no indication of it.

"Our information says that except for the meetings of the consultative groups, nothing concrete had yet been taken by the Centre to resolve the impasse created from the apex court's stay on the OBC reservation quota and the IIMs cannot wait indefinitely," he said.

Our Bangalore Bureau reports: The HRD Ministry's directive to freeze the admission process ``has resulted in a confusion for both the institutes and the students", according to Prof Prakash G. Apte, Director, IIM Banagalore. The institute had, for instance, decided to increase the number of seats to 270 from 240 this year, following the OBC quotaimplementation in a phased manner. "Now, the Centre's letter requesting us to hold in abeyance all admissions has confused us," said Prof Apte.

The institutes are worried about losing talent to private institutions if this confusion is not resolved in the next four-five days, according to sources at the IIMB.