IITs To Extend Fee Concession, Relaxation In Cut-Off Marks For Reserved Category Students

NEW DELHI: The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) are offering fee concessions and relaxation in the lower cut-off to students belonging to reserved categories to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education for all.

“In the JEE-based admissions, fee remissions and fee waivers are provided right from the application stage. At the application stage, students belonging to the SC, ST, PwD (persons with disability) need to pay half the examination fee. Further, cut-offs are relaxed to support more admissions in the SC, ST, PwD and OBC categories,” reports quoted IIT Madras Director V. Kamakoti as saying.

The IIT Madras conducted the Joint Entrance Exam (JEE)-Advanced, the entrance exam for all IITs in the country, this year.

There are 23 IITs at present. As per Ministry of Education’s focus on providing support to students from the disadvantaged sections of the society, several initiatives have been taken. Besides these, some IITs take additional measures individually as well, he said.

“To enable more students to benefit from the high quality of education that the IITs have to offer, SC, ST students who secure marks lower than the relaxed selection cut-off, are given training through a preparatory course, which enables them to directly join the IITs after completion of the preparatory course,” he added.

Citizen Service Centres

Starting this year, the JEE (Advanced) 2024 team enabled ‘Citizen Service Centres’ across the country to help the candidates, specifically those from rural areas, to fill the choices and pay the fees through the online portal. “A multi-lingual call centre has also been set up to answer the queries of candidates. A reconciliation day after the fee-payment deadline date was introduced this year to handle cases (who made at least one payment attempt) that had last-minute technical glitches,” Kamakoti said.

During the admission process, all eligible candidates need to pay a seat acceptance fee to ensure seriousness in applying for the seat. The SC, ST and PwD students pay only 50% of the acceptance fee for the regular candidates.

Kamakoti said in the absence of the seat acceptance fees, it was observed that the candidates blocked the seat but did not turn up when the classes started, leading to many seats lying vacant.

Tuition fee waived off

“If a student’s parental income is less than Rs. 1 lakh, irrespective of category, full tuition fee is waived off by all 23 IITs. Further, full tuition waiver is being provided to the students from the SC, ST and PwD categories,” he said.

Students from the Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) with parental income between Rs. 1 lakh and Rs 5. lakh have two-thirds of their tuition fee waived, he added.