Amid the ongoing monsoon session of Parliament, the Lok Sabha passed the Indian Institutes of Management (Amendment) Bill, 2023 on July 28. The bill to amend the IIM Act of 2017 was introduced in the Upper House amid disruptions by opposition members over the Manipur violence issue. While the Congress claims that the PMO wants to keep the tightest possible control and ensure "ideological purity," the IIMs are concerned that the amendment will take away their autonomy rather than simply solve accountability.
The bill, presented by Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, proposes to appoint the President of India as the 'Visitor' to all the IIMs. As per the proposed changes, the Visitor will have powers to audit their functioning, order probes and appoint as well as remove directors.
Key features of the bill
According to the bill, the Visitor may appoint one or more persons to review the work and progress of any institute, to hold enquiries into affairs thereof and to report in such manner as the Visitor may direct. "The board may also recommend to the Visitor an enquiry as deemed proper against the institute which has not been functioning in accordance with provisions and objectives of the Act," the bill stated.
The bill empowers the President to nominate the chairperson of each IIM's coordination forums. Coordination forums have been proposed to improve coordination at all levels of management by instilling consistent policy objectives. The main cause for the amendment to the 2017 Act was claimed to be a disagreement between the Centre and top management schools regarding issuing one-year executive MBA degrees in early 2020. The University Grants Commission (UGC) guidelines invalidated it because there was no provision to grant such a degree for a year.
What is Section 17 of the IIM Act?
In another major change, the amended bill has done away with Section 17 of the IIM Act that gave powers to the board to initiate an inquiry into the functioning of an IIM, if required. A retired high court judge was to conduct this inquiry, based on which the board would take a decision.
Before the IIM Act was passed, the human resource development ministry (now Education Ministry) used to appoint IIMs' directors, chairpersons and board members.
The education ministry had last year told the institutes it is working out a new procedure for the formation of the search-cum-selection committees involved in the appointment of chairpersons. It had asked the institutes' boards of governors to extend the tenures of their chairpersons till the procedure has been finalised.
Why IIMs are concerned about the bill?
The IIMs are concerned about whether the bill will dilute their autonomy in the name of fixing accountability. The concept of a Visitor in IIMs had first found a mention in the draft of the present act released by the Centre in 2015. However, IIMs had resisted it saying that it would "put a question mark on their said autonomous powers". It was later removed from the final bill. The President of India is the Visitor of all the central universities and IITs and appoints their vice-chancellors and directors.
(With PTI inputs)
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