FIITJEE Centres Shut: Parents Demand Fees Refund, Teachers Flag Unpaid Salaries

Parents of students left stranded due to the closure of multiple centres of the Institute Forum for Indian Institute of Technology-Joint Entrance Examination, or FITJEE, have demanded refund. On the other hand, teachers who worked with the institute have flagged unpaid salaries.

FIITJEE has shut down multiple centres in Delhi-NCR and Uttar Pradesh, after teachers at these centres quit due to "months of unpaid salaries".

The sudden closure has hit students enrolled at these centres, as they were preparing for board exams and competitive entrance tests. Parents of the affected students claim that there was no prior communication about the shut down by FIITJEE. They also alleged that the coaching institute had collected full fees for their courses.

Protests also erupted outside some of the closed FIITJEE centres in North India, and huge outrage erupted on social media platforms. 

With the latest closures, FIITJEE has so far shut down its centres in a number of key cities, including Delhi, Noida, Ghaziabad, Bhopal, Varanasi, and Patna, according to an NDTV report. 

Teachers say that the non-payment of salaries has been a long standing issue from three to four years. Divyanshu Mittal, an ex-chemistry teacher at a FIITJEE centre said, “They never issued full payments, and kept cutting it by 10-20%. They kept assuring that the payments issue will be sorted out soon. While the situation improved for some time in between, the pay cuts then started again. This time, they were deeper cuts of 40-60%.” 

Several teachers of FIITJEE, in recent period, switched over to rival coaching classes like Allen Career Institute and Aakash Institute, he added. 

The teachers affected by FIITJEE's alleged non-payment of dues also marked their outrage online. On social media platform X, a user identified as Neha posted screenshot of a message sent by the teachers of the FIITJEE centre in Noida, who accused the coaching institute of failing to pay salaries for three months in the last year. 

Madan Prasad, the parent of a Delhi-based student, said Rs 5 lakh as fees was collected from him before the coaching centre in the national capital was shut down. "We have been trying to reach someone to resolve this, or at least get our money back. But there is no response from anybody. We have even made an appeal to the government to look into this matter and provide a solution," he said.

The affected parents, in an open letter to the government, sought a “thorough investigation into the financial irregularities and fraudulent activities of FIITJEE”, legal action against the institute's management, and to facilitate the refund of the fees paid. 

The Noida police has initiated an investigation into the case after receiving complaints from parents over the abrupt shutdown of the FIITJEE centre located in Sector 62. A probe has been launched and the police is trying to reach out the coaching institute's management, Deputy Commissioner of Police Harish Chander said.