It's a story of contradictions across the Indian Institute of Managements as far as the 'Certificate Course in Business Administration' for the Officers of the Indian Armed Forces is concerned.

While IIM Ahmedabad and IIM Indore have in principle agreed to conduct the six-month programme twice a year from 2007, IIM Lucknow, which had pioneered the programme in 2005 has quietly discontinued the programme and is not sure if it will conduct the programme in its campus again citing 'differences' with the Ministry of Defence.

IIM-A, whose first programme for armed forces began in 2006 with 60 participants has in principle agreed to make this course bi-annual which if implemented would see the course being conducted from October to March and then from April to September, said an official from the institute.

Same is the case with IIM-I which has agreed to conduct the programme twice a year starting in 2007 from July to December and from January to June.

However, in the case of IIM Lucknow, which held its final placements for the first batch in June 2006, the next batch was set to begin from 3rd of January this year but hasn't commenced so far.

"Although the response of the industry to the officers passing out from IIM-L was very good, we had differences with the Directorate-General of Resettlement, Ministry of Defence on the issue of admission criteria for candidates and providing placement to the students, which is why the January session has had to be postponed," said an IIM-L official.

Apparently, while the institute had little say in the selection of candidates for the course, the responsibility of placing the students was entirely upon its shoulders. The institute's final placements had been quite successful this year with most of them getting abosrbed at high managerial posts in corporates while others starting up their own ventures but the DGR-MoD has not yet communicated to the institute about the next batch.

"We are always open to conducting the course in our campus but are not sure if it will take off anytime soon," added the official.

While the course does not guarantee placements, it has been accepted that the IIM brand would ensure all the students get placed with lateral offers within the last one month.

IIM-A has already sent out placement feelers to companies giving them time between February 10 to March 10 to make their pre-placement presentations and offers. A leading broker company has already interacted with the students and many more are set to follow.

"We expect not less than 150 companies to visit the campus between now and March. With most of the students showing interest in operations, project management, logistics and supply chain management, we have asked them to choose electives in the final term accordingly and have even asked them to plan out the kind of packages they think they should be offered, " said an official from IIM-A.

The official also added the institute had told students that while they should not expect offers like those given to the students of the traditional post-graduate programmes, they could expect good packages.