New Delhi: Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad (IIM-A) today (Apr 13, 2004) filed an affidavit before the Supreme Court opposing the "unilateral" decision of the Human Resource Development Ministry to drastically reduce the fees and said this violated the time-honoured process of the fee being decided by the Board of Governors of the business school.

The premier institute said, "Its is not necessary to reduce fees to achieve the stated objective of making management education more affordable to the less well-to-do sections of the society.

"We strongly feel that a notification of fee reduction from the Ministry is an incorrect solution to the affordability problem. It subsidises rich students who can easily afford the current fee of Rs 1.5 lakhs per annum," IIM-A said.

The top business school in its affidavit said the fee reduction order has to be seen, not in isolation, but in the larger context of many other decisions by the Ministry that threatened the autonomy of the institute.