IIM Sambalpur's Delhi batch takes the institute to court over two classrooms

Forty-five students who joined IIM Sambalpur's first Delhi MBA in Business Analytics batch in July 2025 have taken the institute to the Delhi High Court. They paid about Rs 18.2 lakh for a two-year full-time residential course that, they say, was sold as a campus. What they found in Vasant Kunj were two classrooms inside the Institute for Studies in Industrial Development, no hostel, no library access, a shared canteen and a flying-faculty roster. Justice Tejas Karia has listed final arguments for 16 October. The students want a fee cut or a shift to the Odisha campus.

The Delhi address was the draw. Several of the 45 had missed older IIMs and treated a New Delhi centre as the next-best stamp. The ISID property is real. It is not an IIM campus. Other organisations sit on the same ground. Students say they were led to believe they would have the run of it. The library was off limits. There was no residential block. Faculty flew in. After three months some of the batch had already spent time in Sambalpur and now want to go back there for the rest of the degree.

The petition, filed in July 2026, lists facilities, faculty and fees. The institute's counter-affidavit calls the relocation plea self-serving, contradictory and an afterthought. That line is the legal hinge. If the court accepts that the students knew they were buying a centre, not a greenfield campus, the fee-cut claim shrinks. If the court accepts that the brochure and counselling created a residential campus in Delhi, the fee and the location both move. Either way the case is now about what an IIM campus is allowed to be.

Newer IIMs have spent a decade opening city centres faster than hostels. The brand travels. The dining hall does not. IIM Sambalpur's main Odisha fee for the 2026-28 PGP batch is about Rs 21.13 lakh. The Delhi analytics fee of Rs 18.2 lakh sits close to that number without the campus that number usually buys. A working-professional MBA at the same Delhi centre is listed near Rs 14 lakh and is not the course these 45 joined. They say they paid for a full-time residential programme.

RTI threats came first. Court came second. The batch is small enough that every student is visible to the other 44. That is why the petition reads like a group grievance rather than a test case filed by one parent. The institute is defending the centre as a planned urban site, not a bait switch. The students are defending the word campus. Justice Karia has to decide which meaning the admission process used.

Public institutes lean on brand because brand fills seats. Seats filled on a promise that the classroom would look like Sambalpur, or like an older IIM in a metro, now sit in two rooms in Vasant Kunj. That gap is the information the next CAT applicant needs. An IIM tag in Delhi is not the same object as an IIM campus in Delhi. The fee does not disclose the difference. The petition does.

October 16 will not rebuild a hostel. It may cut a bill or move a batch. It may also tell every newer IIM how tightly it must describe a centre when the word campus is what sells the form. For the 45 who already paid, the useful number is still Rs 18.2 lakh, and whether the court treats that number as the price of two classrooms or the price of a residential degree.

IIM Sambalpur can argue that a city centre is how professional education now works. The students can argue that they were not admitted to a co-working floor. Both sentences can be true and still leave a court with a fee to adjust. The hearing in October is where that adjustment, if any, will be spoken aloud.