SC, ST students to get fee waiver at NITs and IIEST

M Tech students belonging to Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST) will now get tuition fee waiver at the National Institutes of Technology (NITs) and the Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology (IIEST), West Bengal.

A decision was taken in this regard at a meeting of the elite technical institutes chaired by Human Resource Development (HRD) Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank here on Wednesday.

M Tech students, who come under the category of persons with a disability, will also get a tuition fee waiver

“The Council decided to accept tuition fee waiver to SC/ST/PH MTech student in NITs and IIEST where such fee waiver is not available to SC/ST/PH MTech students,” the Ministry said in a statement.

At the meeting, the HRD minister directed the NITs and IIEST to launch a special recruitment drive to fill up as many as 2,200 posts of faculty members which are lying vacant.

“The council decided to launch the recruitment drive to fill up approximately 2,200 faculty positions by December 2019,” the ministry said.

The meeting of the National Institute of Technology, Science Education and Research (NITSER) was attended by the directors of the NITs and the IIEST, Shibpur (West Bengal). The chairpersons of the Board of Governors of these Institutes were also present in the meeting.

The meeting gave “in-principle” approval for the implementation of 'Tenure Track System' for faculty recruitment, the ministry said

“The recommendations of the oversight committee regarding anomalies in the recruitment rules of faculty were also accepted,” it added.

At the meeting, issues related to enhancing the academic performance of the technical institutes and the ways to achieving the higher educational standards were “discussed in detail.”

“The report of the ‘NIT Think Tank’ committee was elaborately discussed to improve upon rankings of the NITs and the IIEST, and it was decided to continue with quarterly meetings for proper evaluation of each NIT,” the ministry said.