The Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) has reportedly sent a letter to all the IIT Directors clarifying that students already enrolled in the undergraduate courses at IITs will not have to pay the revised fee. This rollback for existing students comes in the wake of protests at IIT Kharagpur against the 122% fee hike.
It comes as a great relief to existing students who have already availed a student loan to pay their tuition fee. If the hike would have come into force for an existing student, then he/she would have to pay an additional amount of approximately Rs 1,10,000, over and above the sanctioned loan amount of Rs 90,000. The bank wouldn’t have covered this extra amount under the current loan scheme. To pay the remaining amount, the student would not have been able to avail another education loan. Even if the student tried to secure a loan under the Vidya Lakshmi Scheme, there was no clarity if the banks would have agreed to sanction that amount.