Bhubaneswar: Raising concern over the decision by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) to hike the Class X and XII board examination fees, Odisha School and Mass Education Minister Samir Ranjan Das Monday said the hike will ‘hit’ the parents.
The CBSE has increased the fees of Class X and XII board examinations by up to Rs 1,150.
“It is really a difficult situation for parents to meet the CBSE fee hike. The CBSE authorities should not have raised the examination fees at one go,” Das told reporters after the All India Parents Association’s Odisha chapter members sought Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik’s intervention.
The minister said the state government will examine the matter.
However, CBSE should not have raised the fee structure in this manner, he said.
Earlier, the parents’ association had strongly condemned the CBSE announcement to increase the fees of Class X and XII board examinations. The fees for general category students for both Class X and XII have been doubled from Rs 750 to Rs 1,500 for five subjects.
The SC and ST students, who were paying Rs 350 earlier, will now be supposed to pay Rs 1,200 for five subjects. In a special arrangement only for Delhi, the SC/ST students were only paying Rs 50, while the balance was paid by the Delhi government.
Basudev Bhatt, the Chairman of the Federation, said, “We have strongly opposed the decision and request the Chief Minister to write a letter to the Union HRD Ministry to order the CBSE to withdraw this hike.”
“We had also written a letter to Union HRD Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank in this regard,” he added.
“Apart from examination fee, the CBSE has also imposed a late fee of Rs 2,000 per candidate. It is illegal to impose late fee for poor and needy students,” said parents’ association or the Odisha Abhibhabak Mahasangha in a statement.
For appearing in an additional subject in Class X-XII, both SC and ST and general category students will now have to pay Rs 300. Earlier, it was not charged for SC & ST students.