IITs Seek Review of Fee Concessions Offered for Special Category Students to Manage Costs

Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) have requested the government to replace the policy related to providing fee exemption for special category students with direct reimbursements by the government. IITs have also urged the government to replace fee waiver with interest-free loans through which economically weaker students will be benefitted.

One of the officials of IIT indicated that the cost that is incurred by the institutes are affecting the financial stability of the institutions and draining the corpus funds. Indranil Manna, Director of Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur pointed that they are not against the social welfare policies of the government. Their main plea is to reimburse the gap by the government.

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A total number of 16 IITs have unanimously decided to send proposals to the government regarding the issue in a recently held 155th IIT Directors Meet at IIT-Kanpur.

IITs further recommended that whenever the government wants to provide fee waiver or free education to the students, the cost of fees to these students must be directly reimbursed to IITs through Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT).

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Indranil Manna revealed that at present 48.5 percent students at IITs do not pay fees and instead they are getting merit scholarships from IITs. Hence, the government has to incur the cost and directly address the issue with banks and students.

Currently, IITs are providing a full exemption of tuition to the students belonging to SC/ST category as well as PH. On the other hand, IITs are also providing interest-free loans to the students whose annual income is less than Rs. 9,00,000 for five years. The concern of IITs is that all these costs are borne by IITs from their internal accruals. Therefore, they are seeking relief.