No record mgmt system in city's premier B-school

AHMEDABAD: One would expect country's premier B-school Indian Institute of Management (IIM-A) to practise what it preaches to students. But, it seems values of accountability and transparency in corporate governance are not meant for its administration.
There is no proper record management system in place at the institute. Records are destroyed without anyone noting what has been trashed and who authorised it.
Chief administrative officer NV Pillai is expected to set an example for other officers to follow. Instead, while dealing with an appeal under Right to Information (RTI) Act, Pillai admonished the applicant and got a stern warning.
This was revealed at a hearing of Central Information Commission (CIC) last week. IIM-A employee Ketan Bhatt had filed four appeals against institute administration.
Then came a shocking admission from IIM-A's public information officer (PIO) Kamlesh Joshi. He submitted that the institute doesn't have any written system to keep account of records or their destruction.
CIC held this practice as unacceptable' and directed IIM-A to make rules for destruction of records and also maintain a register to keep account of records that are destroyed.
Bhatt had demanded information and accountability on selection and promotion of employees from IIM-A. While some information was given, most requests were stonewalled stating documents were not on record.
When Bhatt demanded copies of his confidential reports (CRs), he was told as a matter of policy CRs are not shared with employees. But, CIC overruled this contention of IIM-A.
It held that there were no valid grounds for denying Bhatt access to his CRs and ordered that this, along with other information that had been earlier been denied by the business school, be given to him.
As IIM-A's appellate authority, Pillai was warned not to make comments as he had made in his orders on Bhatt's appeals. In one order, he had said, "Rather than wasting his time and harassing the PIO and institute by filing RTI applications, he needs to concentrate on his work."
"Mr Bhatt was misusing provisions of RTI Act for his personal benefit. His intention was to harass the institute by filing several applications seeking large volumes of data," he had said in another order.