Following protests by students of the Indian Institute of Planning and Management, (IIPM), Pune, regarding the post-graduate MBA course , the All India Dean-academics Prasoon Majumdar visited the Pune campus on Monday.

Addressing the students, he clarified that the two-year Post Graduate Programme in Planning and Entrepreneurship course they signed up for was a distance learning course as opposed to a full-time course like the students claim they were made to believe at the time of admission.

After the students got the confirmation, they put forward their demands of a full refund of their course fee. IIPM has charged the students a fee of Rs 4.45 lakh each for the two-year course. Kamlesh Bhagatkar, who led the protests, said, “Since they have given us the confirmation of the course being a distance-learning course, we want a full refund of the fees that we paid within the next eight days. Apart from that, we want all our original documents and a gap certificate mentioning that we are dropping a year because of this issue. We are also putting forth our demands for compensation and interest for the students who applied for students loans.”


After holding meetings with the students, Majumdar gave a written statementthat the institute would refund the money by or before March 12.

The students will also be getting an attendance certificate for the number of days that they attended their classes.

“We have to file an application to get back our original documents. After that we will get them in 10 working days. Also they have promised to give us our refund back by or before March 12. This is a big achievement for us,” said Bharati Poptani, a student of the course.

However, there were some students for whom leaving the course was not an option.

“I left my job and came to join this course. And since I got admission here, I did not sit for any other competitive exam. Thus, for me, leaving the course is not at all an option,” said a student who did not wish to be named.

Despite repeated attempts to contact IIPM officials, both in Pune and New Delhi, they were unavailable for comment.