New Delhi: After a group of students from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Guwahati took their institute to Gauhati High Court for charging a mandatory one-time fee of Rs 1,500 at the time of admission, the court has ordered a refund.
Eight IIT Guwahati students had filed a plea in August saying the imposition of the fee, under the head ‘Alumni Fee’, violates the Indian Constitution, and questioned the institute’s authority to charge the levy on a mandatory basis.
In its ruling passed last month, the high court declined to go into the merits of the case and said nothing about the legality of the fee. However, it ordered the authorities to refund the amount to each of the petitioners.
“This order is confined to only to the petitioners in the present case without deciding on the issue raised by the petitioners,” it said.
The court acknowledged the institute’s submission that it charges the fee on the basis of a resolution passed by the IIT Council, the apex body for management of IITs.
An inspection of the IIT Council’s ‘minutes of the meeting’ since 2014 reveals that the panel hasn’t mentioned any alumni fee. But this year’s minutes of the meeting do talk about alumni funding: “…students who pass out from the institute should be encouraged to pledge one percent of their earnings to the institute.”
IITs have their own ways of maintaining their alumni associations. While some, like IIT Delhi, also charge an ‘Alumni Fee’, others like IIT Kanpur take the caution money deposit at the end of the course as enrolment fee for alumni association.
ThePrint reached IIT Guwahati director T.G. Sitharam for comment but there was no response until the time of publishing this report. An email was also sent to the institute’s Registrar (Interim) M. Guru Prem Prasad, which, too, went unanswered.
‘Repugnant’
In their petition, the students had said, “Alumni fee in the present context refers to a charge imposed upon current students in return for a benefit which is supposed to accrue in the future when the students become alumni i.e. after they pass out from the institute. It is repugnant to the very objective of charging fees from students.
“Charging a fee of such sort would be violative of one’s personal liberty to spend his/her money as per their own wishes which is a fundamental right flowing from Article 21 (right to life) of the Constitution of India,” it read.
After a student graduates, there cannot be an imposition on the person to keep in touch with the institute and contribute to it in any manner. An alumni fee implies that students are forced to pay for something they may not benefit from, the petition had highlighted.
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How other IITs deal with the issue
Similar to IIT Guwahati, IIT Delhi also charges a sum of Rs 1,500 from students at the time of admission as membership fee for the alumni association.
Sanjeev Sanghi, dean alumni affairs, IIT Delhi, told ThePrint, “IIT Delhi charges a fee of Rs 1,500 at the time of admission in the name of alumni fee and students automatically become members of the alumni association after they leave the institute.”
Speaking to ThePrint, a senior IIT Delhi professor, who didn’t wish to be named, said this tradition started about four decades ago as the alumni association didn’t have money to function. As a result, it decided to take money from students at the time of admission and use it for alumni activities. Students, in turn, become members of the association. No one has questioned the institute over this so far.
“If someone wants they can question the legality of a fee charged in the name of alumni fee, which is what happened in the case of IIT Guwahati,” a second IIT Delhi professor said, also on the condition of anonymity.
IIT Kanpur professor Dheeraj Sanghi, however, said. “One can question the legality of an alumni fee but not the intention. Whatever an institute charges is used for the student only.”
IIT Kanpur takes some money from students out of the caution money at the end of the graduation.
The Ministry of Human Resource Development hasn’t given any clear instructions to IITs to charge an alumni fee, but it has asked them to contribute funds for establishing an “IIT Alumni Centre” in Bengaluru.
In a circular sent to IITs in February 2018, the ministry asked older IITs — like Delhi and Bombay — to contribute Rs 1 crore and new ones — like Patna and Hyderabad — to contribute Rs 50 lakh towards establishing the centre. ThePrint has accessed a copy of the circular signed by former HRD secretary R. Subrahmanyam.
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