Equality and Diversity
Equal opportunity and Reservation
IIT Kharagpur is dedicated to giving equal opportunity to students of all castes, communities, religions, gender and economic backgrounds. Admission to undergraduate programmes is through the Indian Institute of Technology Joint Entrance Examination (IIT-JEE) (https://www.iitkgp.ac.in/student-admission-ug ) and admission to post-graduate courses is through the country-level Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE) or Joint Admission Test for Masters (JAM). These admissions are open to all.
The gender distributions amongst the three major groups of students: undergraduate (UG), postgraduate (PG) and research scholars (RS; PhD students) and faculty are shown in the following figures for 2023. As part of the IIT system, since 2021, IIT Kharagpur also reserves 20% of supernumerary seats for female candidates to improve the gender balance in the undergraduate programs at the IITs (https://www.education.gov.in/technical-education-2 ).
The gender distributions for students, faculty and staff for 2023-24 are shown in the following figures.
Reservation for underprivileged
As a Centrally Funded Technical Institute, IIT Kharagpur implements the Government of India’s (GoI) reservation policy which is summarized below and the student distributions are shown in the following figures for 2024.
Government of India’s reservation policy and tuition waiver for different student categories.
| Undergraduate | Government of India reservation policy, % | Tuition waiver, % |
|---|---|---|
| General | 0 | MCM |
| Economically Weaker Section (EWS) | 10 | MCM |
| Other Backward Castes (OBC) | 27 | MCM |
| Scheduled Caste (SC) | 15 | 100 |
| Scheduled Tribe (ST) | 7.5 | 100 |
| Supernumerary female students | 20 | MCM |
Scholarships for underprivileged
As per GoI policy, all students belonging to SC and ST categories get full (100%) tuition waiver.
Furthermore, IIT Kharagpur also offers financial aid to students from all other categories under the Merit-Cum-Means (MCM) scholarship. The students who have obtained at least 60% marks in aggregate or a grade corresponding to 60% marks in the qualifying examination for JEE Advanced, or the CGPA is above 7.0 in 2 consecutive semesters are eligible for MCM scholarship, if their annual family income is beneath the upper limit set by GoI. Number of students should be within 25% of the intake admitted each year to the Undergraduate and Dual Degree courses. The students who satisfy the aforementioned means criterion but are unable to satisfy the specified merit criterion are also exempt from the payment of tuition fees (this category is restricted to 10% of the annual student intake).
In 2022-23, 1653 students got 100% and 654 students got 50% tuition waiver.
In 2023-24, 4575 got 100% and 926 students got 50% tuition waiver.
Additionally, the following scholarships or fellowships are provided by the Ministry of Education, Government of India to all post-graduate students and Ph.D. students. The number of students in each category is shown below.
Scholarships and fellowships available as of 30 July 2024.
| Description | Student category | Number of students | Amount of fellowship, ₹/month | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| As of 30 July 2023 | As of 30 July 2024 | |||
| Prime Minister’s Research Fellowship | Ph.D. students | 151 | 233 | 70,000/- |
| M.Tech. scholarship | M.Tech./M.Sc/ DD -5th year | 1969 | 2746 | 12,400/- |
| Research Scholarship | Ph.D. students | 1181 | 3108 | 37,000/- for 1st 2 years 42,000/- for next 3 years |
| Post-doctoral fellowship | Post-Ph.D. scholars | 2 | 2 | 70,000-1,50,000/- per month |
IIT Kharagpur also has several Endowment and Alumni Funded scholarships for the best students in various batches of different departments in the Institute (https://www.iitkgp.ac.in/scholarships )
Student Brotherhood Fund
- To promote the feeling of oneness in the student fraternity of IIT Kharagpur within the Halls of Residence as well as outside.
- To provide funds as “Loans of Honour” (interest free but to be refunded) / “Donations” (non-refundable) to the deserving student applicants to meet their own educational/medical expenses.https://www.iitkgp.ac.in/student-brotherhood-fund
Similar opportunities are reserved in the recruitment aspect as well in IIT Kharagpur. For instance, 10% of seats are reserved in all civil posts and services, for persons belonging to Economically Weaker Sections who are not covered under the already applicable scheme of reservation for SCs, STs and OBCs (https://gateoffice.iitkgp.ac.in/jmp/docs/EWS.pdf ). There are special recruitment drives held for candidates from SCs, STs and OBCs as well on a regular basis as is evident here https://erp.iitkgp.ac.in/Jobs/auth/facapps.htm.