IIT-B students join protest demanding fellowship hike

Mumbai: The PhD scholars and master’s students of the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IIT-B) are protesting in support of ongoing nationwide fellowship hike movement.

The students have demanded a revision of the current fellowship from the Ministry of human reso-urce development (MHRD) and funding agencies.

Currently, the stipend to the Junior Research Fellowship (JRF) is Rs 25,000 per month while it is Rs 28,000 per month for the Senior Research Fellowship (SRF).

Since a couple of years, there has been no hike in the stipend. The last was in the year 2014 before which the JRF students got Rs 16,000 while the SRF got Rs 18,000. The protesting students demand an imm-ediate hike in the fellowship given the expenses, especially the ones who are catering in Mumbai.

“Various expenses such as semester fees charged by the institutes, money spent on research and other work, make life in a metro city difficult,” a protesting student told this newspaper.

Students have demanded to introduce a hike starting from April this year. They have sent a letter to MHRD and department of science and technology but since there were no response from a long time, students decided to protest.

As per the list of demands from the students of IIT-Bombay for revision of current fellowship, they demand a hike from existing Rs 12,400 to Rs 25,500 for the Masters students.

For the JRF, they want a hike from Rs 25,000 to Rs 45,000. As for the SRF, a hike to Rs 52,000 is demanded which is currently Rs 28,000. For the research associate, who right now gets a stipend of Rs 36,000 wants a hike to Rs 65,000. Currently, various IITs and IISc across the country have been facing similar protests.