Calcutta, Dec. 21: The students' protest at IIT Kharagpur against an increase in the hostel fee of post-graduate and PhD students entered its second day with the authorities refusing to make its stand on the possibility of a rollback clear.

More than 200 postgraduate students and research scholars started the demonstration in front of the main administrative building that houses the IIT director's office yesterday morning, protesting the recent decision to increase the hostel establishment charge by Rs 8,000 per semester.

By evening, nearly 500 more students had joined the agitation, which continued through the night.

IIT director Partha Pratim Chakrabarti, registrar Pradip Pyne and several other senior officials were not allowed to leave their offices.

The officials were allowed to go home this morning and were not stopped when they returned for work this afternoon and left hours later.

"We will continue our protest till the authorities roll back the fee hike. We are ready to hold a discussion with the management," a student said.

Higher education minister Partha Chatterjee said in Calcutta that since IITs were central institutes, the state government would not interfere.

"But considering the fact that the fee hike could affect many meritorious students from economically backward families, my suggestion to the authorities is to give it a second thought before implementing the revised fee structure," he said.

Under the new structure, post-graduate and PhD students will have to pay Rs 37,000 for the coming semester instead of Rs 29,000 as hostel establishment charge.

"An overall hostel fee hike of Rs 2,000 or Rs 3,000 per semester is not unusual. But we are surprised that only a single component of the hostel fee has been increased by Rs 8,000 at one go," another student said.

IIT Kharagpur registrar Pyne said the demand of the students was being "looked into".

In April, students had staged a protest when the HRD ministry announced that the fee at the undergraduate level would be raised from Rs 90,000 a year to Rs 2 lakh.

"IIT fees are being raised so that these top engineering institutes have to depend less on government funding. The idea is welcome. But there should be proper arrangements for poor meritorious students as the fee hikes will prove to be a huge burden on them because they have to largely depend on education loans," a former IIT Kharagpur professor said.