'IITS, NITs students to get refund on withdrawing admissions'

In the wake of rising demand, the government has modified rules to enable refund of seat acceptance fees for those who withdraw their admissions from undergraduate programmes of institutes like IITs, NITs and IIITs for 2015-16.

The refund, after deducting the minimum processing charge, would be made "shortly" by the joint seat allocation authority as well as the central seat allocation board, the ministry of human resource development (HRD) said in a statement.

The joint seat allocation authority conducts common counselling for the IITs, NITs and other centrally-funded technical institutes across the country.

Those students, who remitted seat acceptance fees but did not join the participating institutes, would be treated as "rejecting the offer", the statement said, adding such pupils may claim refund of fees after completion of the seat allocation process.

"In such cases, candidates will be refunded the seat acceptance fees paid by him/her after deducting Rs.1,000," HRD minister Smriti Irani sharing the ministry statement on Twitter.

According to the existing rules, students need to deposit Rs.45,000 as a non-refundable seat acceptance fee under general category and Rs.20,000 in SC/ST categories during the counselling process.

The last date for online submission of bank details for refund is September 26, according to the notice issued by the central seat allocation board on its website.