You have a right to a refund, and how much depends on one date: when your written withdrawal reached the college, measured against the formally notified last date of admission. Find your withdrawal letter or email, find the admission notification with that last date, and the answer to the first question is a percentage. The second question, which forum, is where it gets harder, and it is worth being honest about that from the start.
What does the UGC refund policy say?
In October 2018 the University Grants Commission issued a Notification on Refund of Fees and Non-Retention of Original Certificates. It applies to every higher educational institution under the UGC's authority, and it fixes refund by reference to when the notice of withdrawal is received. The UGC restates the policy in a public notice each academic session, and the notice for 2024-25, which the Calcutta High Court reproduced in Dr Sreeparna Ghosh v State of West Bengal (23 June 2026), records that the 2018 provisions apply to any admission schedule extending beyond the session's cut-off date and that the policy remains in force for subsequent sessions until the UGC revises it.
| Category | When the notice of withdrawal is received by the institution | Refund of fees |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Fifteen days or more before the formally notified last date of admission | 100 per cent |
| 2 | Less than fifteen days before the formally notified last date of admission | 90 per cent |
| 3 | Fifteen days or less after the formally notified last date of admission | 80 per cent |
| 4 | Thirty days or less, but more than fifteen days, after the formally notified last date of admission | 50 per cent |
| 5 | More than thirty days after the formally notified last date of admission | Nil |
Two further parts of the same framework help. Paragraph 4.2 of the 2018 notification bars an institution from insisting on your original academic and personal certificates and from retaining them, which the Telangana High Court applied in Kaluri Shiva Sai Teja v State of Telangana (24 June 2022). And the UGC's Redressal of Grievances of Students Regulations, 2023 define as a grievance the delay in, or denial of, the refund of fees due to a student who withdraws admission within the time mentioned in the prospectus. That gives you a named route through the institution's grievance committee and onward to the UGC, and it is where I would start.
For engineering, management and other technical courses, the All India Council for Technical Education has its own direction. A Bihar State Commission order of 27 September 2022 in DIT School of Engineering v Aishwarya Mishra reproduces the AICTE public notice: where a student withdraws before the course starts, the seat goes to a waitlisted candidate and the entire fee is refunded after deducting a small processing charge. The Commission treated the college's refusal to follow that direction as deficiency in service. Check which regulator your institution answers to, because the slab you cite must come from the right one.
Can I go to the consumer commission?
This is genuinely unsettled, and a district commission may dismiss the complaint as not maintainable. The Supreme Court in Maharshi Dayanand University v Surjeet Kaur (19 July 2010), following its earlier decision in the Bihar School Examination Board case, set aside consumer relief against a university on the footing that its statutory functions of examining and conferring degrees are not services. The National Commission's larger bench then answered a reference on 20 January 2020 in Manu Solanki v Vinayaka Mission University, holding that institutions imparting education, including vocational courses and the activities before and after admission, are not covered by the consumer law, with one exception: coaching institutions, which it held do fall within the jurisdiction of the consumer fora. On 15 October 2020 the Supreme Court admitted the appeal against that larger bench decision, recording that there are divergent views of the Court on whether an educational institution is subject to the consumer law. As of a listing order in September 2025 that appeal was still pending.
So the honest position is this. If your institution is a coaching centre, file the consumer complaint and expect it to be entertained. If it is a college or university, a consumer complaint is a gamble on which line the commission follows, and you should not let two years run on it. Our note on coaching institute fees covers the coaching side in more detail.
- Withdrew fifteen days or more before the notified last date, or before the course started under AICTE: demand the full refund, less the permitted deduction, citing the slab. Institution's grievance committee, then the regulator's grievance route.
- Withdrew inside the thirty-day window after the last date: demand the percentage in the table, and ask whether the seat was filled, because a filled seat removes any argument of loss.
- Withdrew more than thirty days after and the college says nil: the UGC scale does not help, and the case becomes a Section 74 argument about whether forfeiting the entire fee is a penalty.
- Institution is a coaching centre: consumer complaint is open on the 2020 larger bench decision, alongside a demand under any refund term in its own brochure.
What if the regulator route stalls?
A civil suit for recovery of money is always open, and the Contract Act gives you the argument. Section 74 provides that where a contract names a sum payable on breach or stipulates a penalty, the party complaining of the breach may recover only reasonable compensation not exceeding that sum, whether or not actual loss is proved. A clause forfeiting the whole year's fee on withdrawal is a stipulation by way of penalty, and the college must still show what loss it actually suffered. Where the seat was filled from the waiting list, it suffered none. Section 73 supplies the measure of damages the other way, and it is the answer to a college that claims the fee for the remaining years of a course you never attended. Our note on a money recovery suit sets out the procedure and the limitation, which is three years for a suit as against two for a consumer complaint.
- Fix the two dates: the date your withdrawal was received, with proof of delivery, and the formally notified last date of admission from the university's own notice.
- Send a demand letter to the registrar citing the 2018 notification and the applicable slab, or the AICTE notice, asking for the refund and the return of any original certificates within fifteen days.
- File a grievance with the institution's student grievance redressal committee under the 2023 Regulations, and escalate to the UGC or AICTE grievance route if it is not decided.
- If that fails, choose between a civil suit and, for a coaching centre, a consumer complaint, and file well inside two years from the refusal.
What I tell students and parents is that the case is won or lost on the withdrawal letter. An oral withdrawal at the office, or a message to a counsellor on a personal number, gives the college the argument that it never received notice until the seat could no longer be filled. Withdraw by email to the registrar and by registered post, on the same day, and keep both. The rest is a table.