The Supreme Court on Thursday directed the Fee Regulatory Committee under Justice R Rajendra Babu to revise the fee of the self-financing medical colleges in Kerala. Currently, the committee has fixed the annual fee ranged from Rs 6.22 lakh to Rs 7.68 lakh in the general category and Rs 20 lakh for the Non-Resident Indians (NRI) category.
The apex court also directed the management of all self-financing medical colleges in the state to cooperate with the fee-regulating committee. The judgment will be applicable to around 12,000 medical students, who got admission in these colleges from the year 2017, reports Mathrubhumi.
The Kerala government moved the Supreme Court in November 2020 against a High Court order that allowed self-financing medical colleges to hike the MBBS (Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery) fee structure. The HC order was based on the petition from self-financing medical colleges.
The Bench comprising Justice Nageswar Rao directed that the recommendation for the revision by the committee, constituted by Kerala High Court, shouldn’t amount to exploitation of students. The court also directed the committee to complete the fee revision within a fixed time frame.
The fee structure of these colleges was more than three times what had been fixed by the Justice R Rajendra Babu Fee Regulatory Committee for medical education. As per the fee structure finalised by the committee, the annual fee ranged from Rs 6.22 lakh to Rs 7.68 lakh in the general category and Rs 20 lakh for the Non-Resident Indians (NRI) category.
The HC, however, considered the management’s stand that the “hospital has to be treated as a separate establishment and its profit or loss cannot have any bearing on the fee payable by students.” It then directed the Fee Regulatory Committee to consider the same.
On November 13, the HC also ordered the Commissioner of Entrance Examinations (CEE) to issue notification on the maximum fee these colleges can levy, as proposed by the management of various private medical colleges. The CEE reportedly had issued a fee structure for 18 out of the total 19 self-financing medical colleges in Kerala. It has issued a tentative fee structure that ranged from Rs 20.7 lakh to Rs 7.65 lakh in the general category and from Rs 20 lakh to Rs 34 lakh for the NRI category.
The SC intervention comes as a huge relief for thousands of prospective medical students in Kerala. As the MBBS courses for the academic year commenced in December 2020, the students were asked to pay the hiked fee as the Kerala government's petition was pending in the Supreme Court. With the Supreme Court order, the fee is likely to reduce.