MBA fees in India: who actually sets the number you pay

There is no single "MBA fee" in India. A proposed national ceiling exists on paper, but it only applies to AICTE-approved institutes, needs two levels of government sign-off nobody has confirmed, and never applied to IIMs in the first place. The number you'll actually pay is set by whichever body actually regulates your specific college — usually your state's own fee-regulatory committee.

Summary

• An AICTE-constituted committee (the same one that proposed B.Tech fee slabs — see blog #13) also proposed an MBA/PGDM fee range: ₹85,000 to ₹1,95,200 per year, plus up to 15% for development fees. This is a 2022-era proposal, not a confirmed current fee — it needs Ministry of Education and state-government approval, applies only to AICTE-approved institutes, and does not cover IIMs at all.
• The real, binding fee authority for most private colleges is your state's own fee-regulatory committee — Delhi and Andhra Pradesh both run one under their own state law; Telangana's TAFRC (already covered in this series) is another real example. These bodies, not AICTE, actually set and notify enforceable fees.
• This post will not quote a current MBA fee figure for any real state or college — no state has been chosen for this post yet, and the only national figures found are either unconfirmed-as-adopted (the AICTE proposal) or non-authoritative (commercial fee-comparison sites).
• You can contribute a verified MBA fee to Shalyam once you have the college's own official fee notice.

Why AICTE's proposed number isn't "the" MBA fee

The Srikrishna committee's proposed ₹85,000–₹1,95,200 range (plus a 15% development-fee allowance) was built for AICTE-approved management programmes specifically — but three things keep it from being a current, enforceable fee you can rely on:

1. It needed sign-off from both the Ministry of Education and the relevant state government. No source found this session confirms that sign-off happened.
2. It only ever applied to AICTE-approved institutes — IIMs, which set their own fees independently and don't need AICTE approval, were never covered.
3. The most recent reporting found on this proposal is from 2022 — there is no 2025–26 confirmation that it's currently in force anywhere.

Where the real authority actually sits

Private professional colleges' fees are typically set and enforced by a state fee-regulatory committee, not by AICTE's advisory number:

• Delhi runs a State Fee Regulatory Committee under its own 2007 professional-colleges act, specifically empowered to determine fees at privately managed institutions.
• Andhra Pradesh has its own regulatory commission with similar authority, including the power to review and set fees that were never formally notified.
• Telangana's TAFRC (Telangana Admission and Fee Regulatory Committee) is the same body already cited in this blog series for engineering fees — the same kind of authority applies to management courses in that state too.

If your state has its own such committee, that committee's notification — not AICTE's proposal — is the number that actually binds a private college.

How to find your own state's real rule

1. Search for "[your state] fee regulatory committee" or "[your state] professional colleges fee regulation act."
2. Look for the committee's own official notification for the specific college and academic year — not a news article summarizing it.
3. If the college is an IIM or another institute that sets its own fees independently, go directly to that institute's own official fee-structure page instead — AICTE and state committees don't apply to it.
4. Treat any number from a commercial "MBA fees in India" comparison site as a starting estimate only, never as the authoritative figure.

How to contribute what you know

Shalyam's Fees field stores exactly what you'd need to verify an MBA fee: the course, tuition range, academic year, and (optionally) hostel/other charges — read directly from the real field shape in college/services/field_contributions.py. If you have a college's official MBA fee notice, you can add or correct that fee with the notice as proof, so the next reader doesn't have to repeat this same research.

Browse colleges on Shalyam to see this in practice.