Nearly a month after the institute’s Board of Governors (BoG) clipped her powers, Anju Seth, Director of Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta (IIMC) tendered her resignation on Monday. Her tenure was to end in February 2022. According to sources, Seth submitted her resignation following the Board’s decision of drawing various resolutions alleging the director of “wrongdoings” and also for infringing on her powers. It is still not clear if the BoG has accepted the resignation.
The BoG had recently divested Seth of her powers to make appointments and initiate disciplinary action. The institute’s director had written a letter to the government against the Board Chairman Shrikrishna Kulkarni and alleging the board of infringing on her powers.
The IIM Calcutta Faculty Association (IIMCFA), which represents more than 75 per cent of the full-time faculty, had in December last year, approached the Ministry of Education (MoE) expressing concerns over the “decline in the academic environment of IIMC, with faculty and staff shortages, and reduction in spending on research” in the institute.
IIMCFA had sought the Ministry’s intervention “to help arrest the decline of the institute.”
It is to be noted that this was not the first time that concerns were raised over the functioning of the institute. IIMC, had earlier last year, come under fire allegedly for ‘fundamental changes in the governance’ and its ‘inaction, inefficiency and opacity’ in the governance process.
The faculty association had also expressed concerns over the “decline in the academic environment of IIMC, with faculty and staff shortages, and reduction in spending on research” in the institute.