New Delhi, Apr 7 (Agencies): The Indian Institutes of Technology will charge annual fees of Rs 2 lakh from students in the general category from the coming session, against Rs 90,000 at present, the government said Thursday.

However, the Union ministry of human resource development has decided to waive the annual fees in full for students from scheduled castes and tribes, those who are differently-abled or from economically weaker sections.

The 16 IITs in the country take in around 10,000 students for their undergraduate courses. General candidates get access to a little less than half the seats on offer.

Ministry officials said the decision to increase the fee was taken after an IIT panel, headed by IIT Roorkee Chairman Ashok Misra, cleared a three-fold increase in the annual tuition fee to Rs 3 lakh last month.

However, the final decision was taken by HRD Minister Smriti Irani, who chairs the IIT Council, the highest decision-making body of the IITs.

Students from families with an annual income of less than Rs 1 lakh will not be charged any fee.

According to details at the portal of the Joint Entrance Examination for 2015 or JEE(Advanced)2015,  the IITs reserve 27 per cent of seats in every course for other backward classes in the non-creamy layer, or OBC-NCL, as defined in the list at www.ncbc.nic.in Other than this 15 per cent of seats are reserved for scheduled caste students and 7.5 per cent for scheduled tribe students.

However, while unfilled seats in the OBC-NCL category can be given to general category candidates, the seats remaining vacant under SC and ST categories cannot be given to any other candidates.

Persons with disability have three per cent of seats in every category reserved for them.

The government said the benefit will not be limited to these categories, but those belonging to families with annual income of less than Rs 5 lakh will be entitled to a waiver of two-thirds of the fee irrespective of their category.

Students who do not fall under any of these categories would be eligible for loans, the officials said.

Students already enrolled at the various IITs will continue to pay their fee according to the old slabs, they added.