Bangalore: Chairman of the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) - Ahmedabad N R Narayana Murthy today (Dec 31, 2003) denied media reports that IIM-A has rejected grants from the Central Government.

"This is incorrect. Firstly, no decision has yet been made whether to seek grants for the next year or not," he said in a statement.

"IIM-A owes its current pre-eminent status to the wisdom, encouragement and extraordinary support that it has received from successive Ministers and bureaucrats of the Ministry of Human Resources Development (MHRD). IIM-A has never been, and will never be so arrogant as to "reject" the help of a well-wisher like the MHRD," Murthy said.

It is a well-known fact that the admissions at IIM-A are "need-blind" - no student who has been found worthy of admission has ever had to forfeit his/her admission for want of funds, he said. There are innumerable scholarships and loan schemes that these students can avail of. These schemes allow them to repay the loan as a convenient percentage of their disposable income, once they start working.

"As socially responsible people, the members of the Board have been debating, for the last two years, whether the Government, in these days of stretched public finances, should spend its precious resources on institutes like IIM-A, where students can pay adequate fees to support the institute's expenditure," Murthy said.