New Delhi: The admission criteria for admission to the premier engineering institutes of the country - the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), is all set for an overhaul.

According to the recommendation of a panel set up under IIT Kaharagpur's Director, Mr. Damodar Acharya, the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) for undergraduates and Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE) for postgraduates may soon not be the only criteria for their admission. The committee proposes to consider the Class XII marks as well.

Presently, the eligibility for a student to sit for a JEE is 60% in class XII after which a cut-off is decided every year for admission into an IIT.

Following the consensus of the last meeting of the IIT Council to give more weightage to the school leaving examination, the committee proposes to mull over the issue of factoring in class XII examination result in the cut-off for admission to the IITs.

The IIT Directors in a meeting with the Human Resource Development (HRD) Minister, Kapil Sibal, in Manesar, also expressed their discontent over the existing pattern for GATE as they felt that not enough students with research orientation were being picked up through this exam.

Sibal said that each IIT should submit a proposal within a month on one area of expertise in higher research.

Although the admission criteria is becoming stringent with the proposal of IIT-Kharagpur Director's recommendation, the HRD minister retreated with a firm 'No' to IIT-Kanpur Director's proposal for a fee hike.

According to the fee-hike proposal, which the IIT-Kanpur's Director framed, it suggested to hike fees by eight times.

At present, the B.Tech students pay Rs.50,000 per year as their fee which the committee proposed to increase up to Rs.4 lakh per annum over the period of 10 years with a Rs.35,000 mark-up every year.

"The proposal on fee hike should be discussed as the government was planning to set up a Higher Education Funding Corporation which would address poor students," said a senior official.

During the meeting, Sibal also asked the IITs to come up with their plans for the future endeavors in a specialized area in which they want to emerge as global giants by 2020 in four weeks time.