In the midst of a raging controversy over the drastic slashing of fees in the prestigious Indian Institutes of Management, Human Resource Development Minister Murli Manohar Joshi said that financial irregularities in some of these institutions may emerge in the coming days.
"A fear psychosis is being generated by those whose skeletons will be out when financial irregularities of certain institutions will come out," he told NDTV's 'The Big Fight' programme.
The minister's comment comes before the submission of the report by former Comptroller and Auditor General V K Shunglu, who has been asked to go into the financial needs of the IIMs in the wake of reduction of fees from Rs 150,000 to Rs 30,000.
Claiming that opposition to the fee slash was not unanimous Joshi said, "It is just one IIM that started opposition to it," the TV channel said in a press release.
While IIM Lucknow and IIM Kozhikode have accepted the fee slash, IIM Indore, chose to wait for the Supreme Court order and IIM Kolkata unit faculty members came out in strong opposition.
Accusing the IIMs of not having made bye-laws, Joshi said, "They have not created bye-laws. They have to function according to bye-laws. I ask, why have they not created bye-laws? This is a practice they should follow and those bye-laws have to be approved by the government".
Observing that he had called a meeting of all six IIM directors to know whether they had any objection to the fee slash, Joshi said, "They kept quiet and said 'no we have no complaints'."
Commenting on Infosys Chief and Chairman of IIM Ahmedabad N R Narayana Murthy, who vehemently opposed the fee cut, Joshi said, "As far as Infosys is concerned Narayana Murthy knows better than me but as far as these institutions are concerned, I know better than them."