Atul Kumar was lucky: the Supreme Court helped him pursue his IIT dream after he was denied admission for his failure to pay the "seat allocation fee" because of a last-minute software glitch.

But the Dalit student from Titora village in Muzaffarnagar, Uttar Pradesh, would not have had to approach the apex court had the IITs implemented an eight-year-old government order that granted a blanket fee waiver to Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe students.

On April 8, 2016, the human resource development ministry (now education ministry) had issued an order to the IITs saying the IIT Council chairperson had approved a revision of tuition fees at the tech schools to ₹2 lakh a year from 2016-17.

The order, signed by then additional secretary R. Subrahmanyam, added that SC, ST and physically handicapped students "shall get complete fee waiver".

It also said that the most economically backward students, with family income less than ₹1 lakh a year, will be granted a full remission of fees. Students whose family income was between ₹1 lakh and ₹5 lakh a year would get a remission of two-thirds of the fee.

Similar orders, sent to the NITs and other centrally funded technical institutions, remain in effect currently.

These tech schools charge a "seat allocation fee" and a "partial admission fee" upfront from all students while allocating seats during the admission process.

Students who crack the JEE Main and the JEE Advanced take part in counselling, conducted through the Central Seat Allocation Board and the Joint Seat Allocation Authority (JoSAA) portal, for admission to these institutes.

General-category students seeking IIT admission have to pay a "seat allocation fee" of ₹35,000 each. In addition, they have to pay a "partial admission fee", which is close to the tuition fee for the first semester.

Similar fees are demanded from students seeking NIT admission. All these payments are made before the actual admission.

Dalit and tribal students are charged these fees when they seek admission under the general category, having qualified for this category through good scores.

Atul had failed to deposit the "seat allocation fee" of ₹17,500 — the amount charged from SC and ST students — before the deadline. After IIT Dhanbad denied him admission, he approached the JoSAA and Madras High Court but got no relief. The Supreme Court last week directed IIT Dhanbad to admit the "talented boy".

Sanjay Sagar, general secretary of the Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar National Association of Engineers, which helps students from the deprived sections, told The Telegraph that meritorious SC and ST students should get the fee waiver since their social status remains unchanged.

The Ambedkarite association has written to the JoSAA — with copies to President Droupadi Murmu and Prime Minister Narendra Modi — seeking the implementation of the complete fee waiver for SC and ST students, as mandated by the 2016 order.

In the letter, Sagar has asked the government to clarify how many SC and ST students like Atul have been denied admission to the IITs and NITs just because they had failed to pay the — incorrectly demanded — seat allocation fee (SAF) and partial admission fee (PAF).

"The many brilliant candidates of SC/ST categories face difficulties in organising the funds to pay the SAF and PAF, tuition and other fees forced upon them to pay and they are forced to take loan to meet the arbitrary conditions of JoSAA," the letter said.

"Many families got harassed, forced to commit suicide, and even lost livelihood to meet undue demand forced by JoSAA."

The Ambedkarite association has demanded corrective measures, including the implementation of all the fee waivers, free hostel facilities for SC and ST students, and the establishment of SC/ST cells at each institution.

It has also sought a directive to the IITs and other authorities to assess and refund with interest the fees charged over the last 10 years from SC, ST and physically handicapped students.

This newspaper sent an email to higher education secretary Sanjay Murthy seeking the reasons why the institutions had ignored the 2016 government order and charged fees from SC and ST students. His response is awaited.