The one-member V K Shunglu Committee set up by the ministry of human resources to look into the financial structure of the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) has said that the bigger institutes--in Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Kolkata--can run their show without charging a single rupee from students.

The committee, which is expected to hand over its report this week, has backed the ministry's February 5 order to cut fees by 80 per cent for the post-graduate programmes of the business schools. The Shunglu Committee was set up on November 23 after the IIM common admission test question paper leaked.

In February, the panel was also asked to look into the balance sheets of the institutes to find whether the fee cut would lead to financial problems.

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The report said while the three smaller IIMs--in Kozhikode, Indore and Lucknow--could run their shows with central funds, the three bigger IIMs could easily manage their expenses with the huge corpus that they had created plus the government funds that they get.

A ministry source said the fee-cut order would not be detrimental to the institutes' balance sheets. "Rather, it will benefit aspiring students and their families."

Quoting the report, the source said, "Among all the six institutes, IIM Ahmedabad stands on the most solid ground, while the Bangalore and Kolkata units are also financially strong. The IIMs are also at liberty to earn revenues from other sources such as executive programmes."

Interestingly, the Shunglu report goes against the recommendations of the Fifth Expenditure Reforms Commission report, which was finalised in March 2001.

The report had said that autonomous educational institutions, including the IIMs, should be encouraged to maximise generation of internal resources.