Dr Amrita Patel appointed interim chairperson of IRMA

Anand, June 8 (UNI) Dr Amrita Patel, Chairperson of the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB), was appointed today as the interim chairperson of the Institute of Rural Management, Anand (IRMA) in place of Dr Varghese Kurien.

Senior alumni of IRMA Dr Nileema Khetan (Prof) was made an interim director in place of acting director Dr L B Vaswani.

These decisions were taken by the IRMA's board of governors meeting, which accepted Dr Kurien's resignation.

Dr Kurien's resignation has arrived at the IRMA governors meeting today. However, Dr Kurien, who was founder chairman of the IRMA for 26 years, had declared his resignation from the post in Mumbai during a press conference on June five.

With this Dr Kurien's era ends in Anand as earlier he had resigned from the chairmanships of other two institutions - NDDB in 1998 and Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation (GCCMF) on March 20, 2006.

The 84-year-old Kurien has been facing stiff opposition from IRMA board members to quit the Chairmanship since the past one year.

In March this year, Dr Kurien was forced to quit from the Chairmanship of the GCCMF after the board members decided to oust him from his post.

The five-hour long board meeting was held at the IRMA Campus under the chairmanship of V Ramachandran, who is chairman of the Centre for Management Development and also member of Administrative Reforms Commission of the Government.

The IRMA board also constituted a three-member search committee headed by Dr Patel to recommend a panel of names for the appointment of the regular chairman and director of the IRMA. The other two members of this committee are Dr Bakul Dholakia, Director of Indian Institute of Management - Ahmedabad, and noted industrialist Vijay Mahajan.

This search committee will suggest Chairman's names within one month. The new chairman will be appointed in first-week of August, during the next board meeting while, regular director's appointment will be made in 90-days time, Dr Patel told newspersons after the board's meeting.

Dr Kurien, who is also known as the 'Milk Man of India', was the founder chairman of all these three institutions -- NDDB and GCCMF for 33-years each and for 26 years in IRMA. In his resignation letter Dr Kurien has stated 'old-age' as the cause for quitting the job. He has stated that ''Now, time has come for me to step down,'' he had said.

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