Gujarat High Court strikes down expulsion of 3 students by IIM Ahmedabad

The expulsion of three students from the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIMA) after they were not allowed a promotion from first to second year coursework in the Doctoral Programme in Management (DPM) course has been set aside by the Gujarat high court, since the institute did not have such powers to expel them in accordance with its manual.

"The institute did not have powers to expel students at the end of their first year based on academic deficiency," Justice Nikhil S Kariel explained. "The expulsion notifications issued on June 7 and affirmed in appeal on June 18 were not in accordance with authority of law," he added.

Abhilasha Kumar, Atul Gupta, and another candidate named Uthara PK were given a notice on May 22 to respond within 24 hours with reasons why their candidacy for a second year may not be withdrawn for not satisfying a requirement for a promotion.

The expulsions were decided by the executive committee of the institute based on academic deficiencies. The students appealed against the expulsions, but they were rejected by the director of the institute.

Advocates Anand Yagnik and Biju Nair, representing the students, told the court that under the DPM Manual, it is mandatory for the institute to Review & Rectify & take other Remedial Steps in case of minor deficiency in studies and that this ought to have been done prior to asking the students to leave.

They stated it did not allow expulsion on the basis of academic deficiency at the end of the first year of coursework studies. A student got a poor performance because she cited references produced by Artificial Intelligence in her work, which were discovered to be false.

"The students presented a case in which they claim they were discriminated against because they were not given an opportunity to be heard despite being in a situation in which they hadn’t had a chance to prove their capabilities," according to a

The court negatived the institute’s stance. The court observed that according to the manual, students were given two years to do their coursework, with an extra year to attain the required standard. The court stated that students can be asked to leave only after this time.