Directors of various Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) will be meeting with the Minister of Human Resource Development Prakash Javadekar at IIM Shillong on Tuesday to deliberate upon the proposed IIM Autonomy Bill. 

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The draft bill proposes to give autonomy to nineteen IIMs, empowering them to award degrees instead of diplomas for their IIMs for their two-year programmes. The draft law is modelled on the IIT Act and has been under deliberation for more than one year now.  

The September 20 meeting, however is being perceived to be an important step forward in terms of deciding the outcome as all the Directors will be presenting their stand on the draft bill. Atanu Rakshit, Director of IIM Rohtak, says: “Various Directors will be presenting their stand on the bill and along with it some data related to the institute. We are hoping for a positive outcome from the meeting.”

The bill also gives autonomy to institutes to “lower the cost of education and to enhance the reach of the education by use of information and communication technology.” However, it has laid down the condition of taking prior approval of the government before making changes in the fee structure. The fee part was one where officials at IIM Ahmedabad, the oldest IIM, had an opposition. In order to take suggestions from IIM-A faculty members and Director, Javadekar had held a closed door meeting with them on Saturday.  

“The responses have been encouraging”, Javadekar had said after the meeting. He also told journalists that a special panel will review the suggestion on September 30 and then form a draft which will further be circulated for improvement. 

The thirteen old IIMs, including Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Kolkata, Lucknow, Indore, Kozhikode, Shillong, Ranchi, Rohtak, Raipur, Tiruchirappalli, Kashipur, Udaipur, and the six new ones, including Visakhapatnam, Bodh Gaya, Rohtak, Sirmaur, Rau and Nagpur, will be able to award degrees to its students once the new IIM Bill is passed in the Cabinet.