IIM Ahmedabad implements PhD reservation policy, alumni urge director ‘to follow it in spirit’

NEW DELHI: Good news! Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIM Ahmedabad) has implemented reservation in PhD admission from the academic year 2024-25. “Government of India guidelines for reservation are followed during admissions,” the latest IIM-A PhD admission notification 2024 issued by the administration read.

A Public Interest Litigation (PIL) was filed by the Global IIM Alumni Network in 2021 stating that IIM Ahmedabad which is governed and funded by the Union ministry of education violated the Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Admission) Act, 2006 (CERA Act) for PhD admission process.

Taking to social media, Anil Wagde, an NIT Allahabad graduate, anti-caste activist who filed a PIL for the association of IIM graduates, in 2021, said: “We won. IIM Ahmedabad after 7 years of battle, has agreed to implement reservation in PhD courses.”

Sharing the image taken in September 2017 with Arun Khobragade, Dr Suraj Yengde on their way to meet Errol D'Souza, the then director of IIM-A, to urge him to implement reservation in PhD degree courses and faculty reservation, Wagde wrote: “While he agreed to all our arguments (we won argument on all his questions/arguments) but said, faculty is not ready to implement reservation as though IIM faculty is above our Indian constitution.”

Also read ‘Creamy layer’ rule will make Dalit, Adivasi teachers more scarce; deal a blow to diversity: Manoj Mitta

IIM Ahmedabad PhD reservation policy

Recollecting “ups and down in the case”, he said after D'Souza retired last year, Bharat Bhaskar was appointed director of IIM Ahmedabad. The IIM alumni wrote to the new director and he promised to look into the matter.

Following this, IIM Ahmedabad filed an affidavit in Ahmedabad High Court stating they will implement reservation. However, there was no mention of the timeline. Notably, 15 out of the 20 IIMs have been following the quota policy.

“IIM Ahmedabad was the last man standing when it came to implementing reservation in PhD courses. Lack of reservation in PhD courses results in a lack of qualified candidates for faculty in IIMs resulting in abysmal representation in IIM faculty,” he wrote on X.

Further the alumni thanked Bharat Bhaskar for implementing the reservation policy and urged him to “follow it in spirit”. The institute offers PhD admission in management through the Common Admission Test (CAT) score. Foreign candidates will have to qualify the Graduate Management Aptitude Test (GMAT) to be eligible for admission into doctoral programmes offered at IIM Ahmedabad. As per the National Institutional Ranking Framework ( NIRF 2024 ), published by the ministry of education, IIM Ahmedabad was declared the best management institute in India.

The institute issued the PhD admission notification 2024 and started the registration process on September 19. The last date for submitting the IIM Ahmedabad PhD application form is January 20, 2025.

“There is not a single SC, ST, OBC faculty at IIM Ahmedabad. Last checked there was only one Muslim faculty member recruited very recently. We do take pride in the diversity of India but faculty at IIMs predominantly comes from one caste,” he highlighted in his post.