"We had to pay for admission despite a government's order to waive off fees of differently abled students. Many differently abled students are from poor families and it is difficult for them to cough up admission fees. It seems the government has no control over colleges," said a visually impaired student of BJB Junior College, who took admission in plus II arts this year.

A circular issued by the women and child development department said, "It is a challenging task for disabled students to study up to Class X and to clear the High School Certificate examination. It is even more challenging to pursue further higher studies or technical studies because of their disability. There are also emotional and financial factors that affect the ability of such students to continue higher education. At times the required support from the family members is also inadequate.

"The government is keen to ensure that the disabled students pursue higher vocational studies despite several handicaps, including physical disability. Therefore, it has been decided to exempt the tuition fee and other related fees for higher and technical studies in favour of disabled students in government and government aided institutions," the circular read.

"I had paid Rs 730 when I took admission last year and even for re-admission I had to pay the fees, something which should be taken care of by the government. Besides college fees, we also have to pay hostel charges," said R C Sahu, a second year plus II student of BJB Junior College.

The principal of BJB Junior College, Gobinda Chandra Pradhan, said, "We have been exempting tuition fees and examination fees from students belonging to the physically handicapped category. The government circular is quite confusing and does not clarify what are the other related charges, which we need top waive off. But we are taking some user fees like cycle stand, insurance, identity card, magazine fees and so on, which are very nominal."

However, the principal of Rama Devi Women's (Autonomous) college, Chitrangada Samanta Singhar, said, "We don't take any fees from the physically handicapped students according to government's guidelines."

The exemption is application for blind students, who use Braille for studies, hearing impaired and speech impaired students and orthopaedically handicapped pupils with more than 75% disability, official sources said.

SOURCE: Times of India