The Centre on Wednesday put the onus of fee regulation on the state governments and individual institutions, faced with queries from parliamentarians about high fees in government and private higher educational institutions.

Through separate written questions in the Rajya Sabha, Congress member Randeep Singh Surjewala, Rashtriya Janata Dal member A.D. Singh and Aam Aadmi Party member Vikramjit Singh Sahney had asked the government about the actions being taken to check the increase in fees.

Surjewala wanted to know if the government had reviewed the recent fee hikes in the IITs, IIMs and central universities and whether the reduction in government funding to higher educational institutions contributed to the rising fees.

The top IIMs charge over ₹25 lakh for a two-year MBA course. The IITs charge ₹8 lakh as tuition fee for a four-year BTech course.

Minister of state for education Sukanta Majumdar said the IITs, IIMs and central universities were autonomous institutions governed by their respective acts and statutes.

“Fees in central universities and IIMs in the last five years have been decided by each institute’s statutory body taking into consideration the need to supplement funds for meeting rising operational costs, to introduce new academic programmes and to ensure provision of high-quality education,” the minister said.

Ajay Yadav Samrat, a former student leader at Allahabad University, a government-funded institution, said the Centre’s poor funding had forced the institutions to hike fees. He said Allahabad University hiked hostel fees from ₹22,000 to ₹24,000 per year this year.Samrat said he led a 1,090-day protest on the campus between 2020 and 2023 against the tuition fee hike inevery course.

“The government and the University Grants Commission provide much less money than the institutions need. The institutions are forced to increase the tuition fee and hostel fees to manage their expenses,” he said.

Sahney wanted to know the mechanism to regulate fees in private schoolsand colleges.

Minister of state for education Jayant Chaudhary said education was placed on the Concurrent List of the Constitution and private schools were under the jurisdiction of the respective state governments. He said the private universities were governed by their respective laws while fees in private colleges were determined by the policies of their affiliating university.

Majumdar said the UGC had developed a dedicated portal called “UGC e-Samadhan: A step forward: Service to Stakeholders” forregistering complaints.