New Delhi, Aug 14 (IANS): The Central Board of Secondary Education on Tuesday decided to restore the practice of charging Rs 50 from schools for SC and ST candidates for 10th and 12th boards. The board while announcing the relief said that the rest of the enhanced amount will be paid by the Delhi government.

The decision for giving the relief to the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe students here was taken following the directions of the Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry, the officials said.

"On the direction of HRD Minister, CBSE has decided to restore practice of depositing only Rs 50 on CBSE registration portal from SC/ST students of Delhi govt schools. For the remaining amount, CBSE will take up reimbursement of increased fees directly with Delhi state government after finalising list of candidates. This has been informed to Delhi government", the CBSE said in a statement.

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Last week, the board had increased the examination fee for the SC and ST students by 24 times from Rs 50 to Rs 1,200. The exam fee amount for the general category students studying in class 10th and 12th was increased from Rs 750 to Rs 1,500.

The CBSE said that a loss of Rs 250 crore forced it to raise the examination fee drastically, as there was no fee hike in the last five years.

The board said that the factors such as increase in honorarium of evaluators by 33 per cent, huge increase in storage and other logistical costs as well as to neutralise the deficit after the competitive examinations such as National Elegibility Test (NET) were passed on to the National Testing Agency, were responsible for the examination fee hike.