New Delhi, February 16
The Supreme Court today directed three petitioners in the IIM fee controversy to place before it complete data about the revenue generated by the six business schools annually and the balance sheets for the past 10 years to make a case for issuing notice to the government on its decision to slash the fee from Rs 1.50 lakh to Rs 30,000.
While stating that admissions to such prestigious institutions should not be a “monopoly” of the elite, a Bench of Chief Justice Mr V.N. Khare, Mr Justice A.R. Lakshmanan and Mr Justice S.H. Kapadia directed former Attorney-General Ashok Desai, appearing for the petitioner, to place the details before it by February 27.
Besides the balance sheets for past 10 years, the details should be on the portion of the fee paid by a student that goes to the corpus created by the IIMs, the amount that goes into capital expenditure and revenue expenditure, and the subsidy provided to each student by the Union Government, the court said, without issuing notice to the Centre.
The details were sought after Additional Solicitor-General (ASG) Mukul Rohatagi, appearing for the Union, said the IIMs spent nearly Rs 4 lakh per annum on each student, of which about Rs 2.50 lakh was provided by the Centre. He also told the Court that the IIMs had created a “corpus” of Rs 100 crore out of the fee generated by them.
When Mr Desai pointed out that the IIMs were not “government controlled” institutions, as they were managed by a registered society, and the Centre had no right to pass an order for reducing the fee, the court said: “You can only charge revenue expenditure, but the charging of capital expenditure is not justified.”
Questioning the locus standi of the petitioners, a lawyer, a student of IIM, Ahmedabad, and a postgraduate of IIM, Bangalore, the court asked: “If the IIMs were satisfied with the government decision, who are you to challenge it?”
“These institutions should be accessible to the common man, they are not for the elite only,” the court observed.
The court also told the petitioner’s counsel that since the IIMs were taking grants from the Centre, these would be covered under the 11-Judge Constitution Bench ruling on the fee structure applicable to the private aided educational institutions, in which capital expenditure was prohibited.
A public interest litigation (PIL) filed by the petitioners has sought quashing of the Union Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry’s February 5 order slashing the fee on the ground that it was issued with the mala fide intention of gaining control of these institutions of excellence and with an eye on the vote bank by the NDA government.
Defending the Centre’s decision, the ASG contended that no illegality had been committed by the government as the step had been taken as per the All-India Council of Technical Education Act, which also covered the IIMs.
