IIT council set to review fee hike decision of Smriti Irani-led HRD ministry

The apex coordination body of all IITs is set to meet later this week and review the decisions of hiking tuition fees by 122 per cent apart from giving financial concessions to special category students, taken by the HRD Ministry when it was under Smriti Irani. The IIT Council is scheduled to meet in Mumbai on April 28.

"The review of the fee hike and the financial concessionannounced for special category students in 2016 is likely to top the agenda," an official source said. Concern over the fee hike was first raised at the council's meeting in last August when the directors of several IITs had said that the financial concessions introduced for special category students had defeated the purpose of fee hike as there has been no revenue enhancement.

The council is also likely to discuss a proposal for replacing the fee waiver with reimbursement by either the HRD Ministry or the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment.

"There is a proposal that either the HRD Ministry or the Social Justice Ministry should reimburse the IITs for the costof educating students entitled to complete fee waiver. It has also been recommended that students from the economically backward sections should be given interest-free loans insteadof full or partial waiver," the source added.

In last April, the HRD Ministry had approved increasing the annual fees for undergraduate courses from Rs 90,000 to Rs2 lakh, a rise of 122 per cent, for new enrolments. The ministry had also decided to give a complete fee waiver for the differently-abled, students from SC and ST communities and those belonging to families with an annual income of less than Rs 1 lakh.