delhi

Updated: Jun 23, 2018 08:02 IST

The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) has told the Union housing and urban affairs ministry that it had done no wrong in auctioning the naming rights of IIT-Delhi metro station to coaching institute FIITJEE and it is as per the agency’s advertising policy, two senior government officials familiar with the matter said.

However, to assuage IIT-Delhi’s concerns that co-branding its name with a coaching institute sends a wrong impression, DMRC has directed FIITJEE to put a disclaimer on the signage that it is not associated with the engineering institute in any way.

“FIITJEE has since put a disclaimer on the metro station that they do not have any partnership with the engineering institute,” DMRC chief Mangu Singh said.

A controversy erupted recently after the IIT-Delhi metro station, located just outside the institute’s campus, was named as “FIITJEE-IIT”, after DMRC auctioned the naming right of the station to the coaching institute.

IIT-Delhi took up the matter with the Union human resource development (HRD) ministry and said the co-branding signage gives a wrong message that the engineering institute has a partnership with a coaching institute.

After IIT-Delhi flagged the matter, the HRD ministry wrote to the housing and urban affairs ministry, requesting them to look into the matter. The latter had sought DMRC’s response on the co-branding issue.

“DMRC has said they auction the naming rights of metro stations in accordance with their policy. They have doing it for the last four years in an attempt to raise more revenue,” said one of the officials cited above.

DMRC chairman Mangu Singh said, “We have done no wrong. The branding is as per our policy. Naming rights have also been auctioned in other metro stations.” He said IIT-Delhi has also approached the Delhi High Court in the matter. “Whatever the court decides, we will take a call accordingly,” he said.

So far, DMRC has auctioned naming rights in over 40 metro stations across the capital.