I am impressed with the work done by you so far and am writing this mail with the hope that I will also get the same fair treatment and justice to my case which is given below. As per advertisement dated 4th November’09 in “The Times of India”, we, a group of 19 women in all, enrolled for the program for which we received printed handouts titled “ITM Group of Institutions in Collaboration with SNDT Women’s University Mumbai, offers Research Program leading to the award of Ph.D. Degree in Management for Women Scholars only”. In addition to the admission and selection process, I paid totally Rs. 60,000/- to ITM. I completed the coursework from February 2010 to May 2010 and submitted my Research Proposal to ITM in September 2010. This program was inaugurated by Dr. Gulanar Sharma of SNDT university. Thereafter there is no revert on the proposal submitted from ITM nor from SNDT. Meantime, ITM Ph.D. program head, who was a senior person from the institute who was in touch with us, resigned from ITM and left Mumbai! No one in ITM except a administrative staff Manager called Jasmine Jha was known to us and even she had no answer to our queries.

It is March 2013, more than 2 years since I submitted the Proposal! Had I got registered on time, I would have been close to completion of my Ph.D. by now. This delay has put my calculations completely out of plan and now I would not like to pursue this course any further. Also, the course work that was completed with ITM could not be used for registering in any other university, which left us no choice but to wait for response from ITM and SNDT. Also, the entire intention was to get a Ph.D. from a well established and known university of SNDT, otherwise (if I wanted to do Ph.D. from some other new university), I would not have applied for this course in the first place. The entire process was painfully slow and non-communicative on the part of ITM and SNDT and has led to a loss of precious time, effort and money for me. Then I applied for refund from ITM of Rs. 60,000/- paid by me alongwith interest for the said period by email, to which Dr. P.V. Ramana, Chairman ITM Group replied as follows by email. “Dear Neha A PhD consists of 2 parts a. Preparatory work – counseling + course work: You have completed this and have recieved your mark sheet – ITM Charges only for this B. We collect no fee on behalf of SNDT C. When SNDT refused to cooperate with ITM and changed their PhD admission policy, we offered alternative. ALL affected students except you have chosen the alternative. Since ITM has given you mark sheet, Jasmine and the PhD Director refused a refund for you. I suggest that you have no legitimate claim for a refund. I cannot over ride the decision of my own officers” Please help me to recover this money paid as this program has not been of any use to me.

Complainant Information
name- Neha_M