IIT Appeals For Withdrawing Fee Exemption To Special Category Students

Facing a financial crunch due to the fee exemption for special category students at the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT), the group of insitutions have appealed to the government to replace the current policy. The replaced policy, IIT has suggested is direct reimbursements by the government to such students. It has also suggested replacing fee waiver with interest free loans to economically weaker students.

The cost incurred on such students is "adversely affecting the financial viability of the institutions and eroding their corpus funds", the recommendation from Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) to the government said.

"We are not against the policy and the social welfare decision taken on fee waivers... We are just pleading with the government to reimburse the gap," said Indranil Manna, director at IIT-Kanpur.
During the IIT-Kanpur 155th meeting for all IIT directors, it was in unison agreed to send these proposals to the IIT Council - the apex coordination body for all the 16 IITs chaired by the union HRD minister.

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A couple of months ago during an IIT council meeting headed by HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar, the nod was given to accomodate non - residential students into undergraduate and post graduate programs in a move to increase the total student strength to one lakh by 2020.

However, some of the IIT branches came up with challenges like lack of infrastructure and funds to achieve that goal. Seven IITs from Bombay, Delhi, Guwahati, Kharagpur, Kanpur, Madras and Roorkee denied to agree with the idea.

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