The annual fee for undergraduate courses in all 23 branches of the Indian Institute of Technology will be hiked from Rs 90,000 to Rs 2 lakh from the upcoming academic year, Ministry of Human Resource Development officials told PTI. This comes after an IIT panel cleared a proposal for a three-fold fee hike, from Rs 90,000 to Rs 3 lakh per annum, and sent it to the HRD ministry for approval.

The decision also comes just a day after after HRD minister Smriti Irani said that students belonging to the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and differently-abled categories will get a full tuition-fee waiver at all IITs. A formal announcement on the same is expected soon, reported The Times of India. The IITs currently have a 15% quota for SCs, 7.5% for STs and 27% for Other Backward Classes.

Addressing an event in Surat to mark the Bharatiya Janata Party's foundation day, Irani also said that those students who come from families whose annual income is less than Rs 5 lakh will be given a 66% concession in tuition fees. She added that the move will benefit nearly 50% of the 60,471 students enrolled in India's top engineering institutes.