New IIMs Facing Challenge of Filling Vacant Seats

The IIM’s which have started their academic session this year are literally facing a big challenge of filling up their vacant seats.

The IIM Nagpur, the IIM Amritsar and the IIM Bodhgaya have started classes for the first batch of postgraduate programme (PGP) without being able to fill all the 60 seats. The institute in Bodhgaya could manage to fill just half the seats. While the admission process is still going on in IIMs in Sambalpur, Odisha, Visakhapatnam and Sirmaur in HP.

The older institutes are mentoring the new ones to help build the IIM culture in them. The IIM Indore is mentoring the IIM Sambalpur, which was supposed to start classes in September first week, but due to low admission rate, the launch has shifted to the last week according to a media report.

The IIM Visakhapatnam and the IIM Sirmaur, which are mentored by the IIM Bangalore and the IIM Lucknow respectively, would hold registrations shortly.

Though the budget for 2014-15 proposed to set up the six new IIMs, the Union cabinet on June 24 finally approved the proposals after locations for the campuses had been finalised. By the time the cabinet approved, the older IIMs had already completed admission and started their classes for this session.

Manish Kumar Thakur, a professor at IIM Calcutta, which is mentoring the IIM Bodhgaya, said the admission process for the new institution was to be carried in short span of time. The students, who have qualified in the common admission test, were offered admission. Depending on acceptance of the offers, the process continued for some time. "These are initial hiccups associated with any new institution," Thakur said to the media.