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The elite Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) have more than doubled the annual fee for undergraduate students from the upcoming academic session. The annual fee will now be Rs 2 lakh instead of the present Rs 90,000. However, students from the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and differently-abled will get complete fee waiver while the most economically backward students whose family income is less than Rs 1 lakh per annum will also get full remission of the fee.

Announcing this the Ministry of Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry said the report of the Committee on funding of IITs and the recommendations of Standing Committee of IIT Council (SCIC) for revision of annual fee in IITs to Rs.3 lakh per year from the current Rs.90000 had been examined but instead it was decided to hike the fee to Rs 2 lakh. The other economically backward students whose family income is between Rs 1 lakh to Rs 5 lakh per annum will get remission of two-third of the fee, and all students will have access to interest free loan under the `Vidya Lakshmi Schemeâ for the total portion of the tuition fee payable.

The rationale for the SCIC recommendation arises from the fact that the cost of maintenance of the IITs is to be met largely from the student fee. On an average, the Government is spending about Rs 6 lakh per year on each student in the IITs, an official spokesperson of the Ministry said. Further, all IITs have been asked to use the increased student fee for infrastructure development with the assistance of funds from the Higher Education Funding Agency (HEFA) so that the increased fee directly translates into better infrastructure for the students. The Ministry also notified the changes in the JEE examination pattern for 2017. It was decided that the performance of the students in the Class 12 Class Examination shall be a crucial parameter for determining the eligibility of the students for JEE examination. For all candidates to qualify in the JEE Examination, they shall have to secure at least 75 per cent marks or be in the top 20 percentile in the 12th Class Examination conducted by respective Boards. For SC/ST students, this condition has been relaxed to 65 per cent.

The present system of giving 40 per cent weightage for the 12th Class marks in calculating the ranks in the JEE Main shall be dispensed with. All other JEE Examination systems shall remain unchanged. These recommendations were made in the Ashok Misra Committee and are based on public feedback. Meanwhile, students of the IIT at Guwahati have demanded the government to roll back the fee hike from the next academic session. `Already the fee is high and now doubling it will impact the entire family,âÂÂâ the students said.”