New Delhi: The proposed fee hike in the elite Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) will be implemented from the next academic session, the Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry has said.

According to the Ministry officials, HRD minister Mr. Arjun Singh has cleared the C.N.R. Rao Committee's recommendation to double the fees in all existing IITs.

The fees for popular courses such as B.Tech and M.Tech have been raised to Rs.50,000 from the existing Rs.25,000.

According to a senior ministry official, "In the wave of the hike in fees in the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs), it would not have been possible for the Ministry to refuse a hike in fees for the IITs as well, where the fees were last increased about a decade ago".

The directors of all existing IITs have already agreed to the fee hike.

It was in 1950s that the fee was fixed at Rs.500 per student per year and in 1998, after 40 years, the fee was revised and fixed at Rs.2,000. There has been no rise in the fee for the last ten years now.

The seven existing IITs had also complained that they had not been allocated adequate funds in the latest federal budget. Instead, a huge share of the funds had been diverted to the upcoming IITs in Bihar, Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan.

Earlier, all the seven IITs had written to Arjun Singh pointing out the sorry state of affairs, saying many of them were on the verge of bankruptcy. IIT Bombay had said that it did not have enough money to pay salaries to its staff.

IITs are considered to be the hub for all engineering students. Each year more than 2 lakh students vie for 4,800 seats, available in the IITs, through its Joint Entrance Examination (JEE).