Human Resource Development Minister Arjun Singh has convened a meeting of Indian Institutes of Management in New Delhi on February 1, a day after he said the government would not come in the way of these prestigious B-schools going global if they amended their memorandum of association.
Singh convened the meeting of directors of all IIMs to discuss issues relating to, among other things, autonomy and measures to further strengthen the institutions, HRD ministry sources said on Thursday.
They said the meeting would deliberate on further strengthening of the autonomy and discuss whether it is 'perceived to have diminished anyway in the recent past.'
The assistance expected from the ministry in order to further strengthen the IIMs would also be taken up in detail, the sources said.
Earlier, IIM-Bangalore's ambitious plan to open a campus in Singapore had got a jolt on January 11 when the HRD ministry refused it permission asking it instead to first cater to the demand at home considering the huge demand-supply gap in IIM seats.
Maintaining that the government did not have the funds to set up new IIMs, Singh had requested all IIMs, especially those with large corpus, to meet the domestic needs before going abroad.
Under criticism that HRD Ministry was opposed to IIMs going global, Singh changed tack yesterday and said he was not against it if their MoA allowed.