The plight of around 5,000 students caught in the midst of the quota controversy and subsequent freezing of admissions at the Indian Institutes of Management have finally received some respite.

After the directive from the All India Council for Technical Education to all education institutes asking them to refund course fee if the student wants to shift to another institute, the IIM Ahmedabad Alumni Trust has also come forward to offer loans to needy prospective students.

The IIM Ahmedabad Alumni Trust has announced that students who have been uncertain of how to go about approving education finance in the wake of the admission could avail of a loan from the IIM-A Alumni Trust.

Although the AICTE has made it clear that institutes will have to refund course fees except a nominal processing fee of Rs 1,000 to the student, the Alumni Trust has decided to offer an alternative to the students.

If undertaken, the loan will be applicable to the extent that a student incurs a loss through forfeiture of deposit fees paid to other business schools, which in the present scenario seems unlikely.

However, the trust has said that it will work with IIM Ahmedabad to put in place the logistics of application and disbursement of the loan all the same.

The loan will be provided out of the corpus that the Alumni Trust has raised.It is also said to be in touch with other IIM Alumni to introduce similar programmes in the other IIMs too.