IITs: Fee concession, relaxation of limits: IITs take steps for reserved category students

He Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) across the country are offering fee concessions and relaxation of already lower limits to reserved category students to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education for all, according to officials. “In JEE based admissions, fee remissions and waivers are offered from the application stage. At the application stage, students belonging to SC, ST, PwD (Persons with Disabilities) are required to pay only half fee Also, the limits are relaxed to support higher number of admissions in SC, ST, PwD and OBC categories,” he said. IIT Director of Madras V Kamakoti.

IIT Madras conducted the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE)-Advanced, the entrance exam for IITs, this year.

“There are currently 23 IITs and as per the Education Ministry’s focus on providing support to students from underprivileged sections of the society, several initiatives have been taken. Apart from these, some IITs are also taking additional steps individually,” he said.

“To enable a larger number of students to benefit from the high quality of education that the IITs have to offer, SC and ST students who score below the relaxed selection cut-off are given special training through a preparatory course , which allows them to directly join the IITs after completing the preparatory course,” he added.

Starting this year, the JEE (Advanced) 2024 team has enabled ‘Citizen Help Centres’ across the country to help candidates, specifically from rural areas, complete the options and pay the fees through the online portal. line.

“A multilingual call center was also set up to respond to candidates’ queries. This year a conciliation day was introduced after the fee payment deadline to deal with cases (who made at least one payment attempt) that They had last-minute technical problems,” Kamakoti said.
During the admissions process, all eligible candidates pay a position acceptance fee to ensure seriousness in applying for the position. SC, ST and PwD students pay only 50 per cent of the acceptance fee of regular candidates.

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

“Since in the seat allocation process, seats reserved for SCs and STs can only be allotted to them, a vacant SC or ST seat results in denial of a precious seat in the IIT to another deserving one.” reserved category candidate,” he stated.

“If the income of a student’s parents is less than Rs 1 lakh, irrespective of category, all 23 IITs waive off full tuition fee. In addition, full tuition fee waiver is also offered to students of candidates SC, ST and PwD.” said.

students of the Economically weaker sections (EWS) with parental income between Rs 1 lakh and Rs 5 lakh are exempted from two-thirds of the tuition fee, he added.