The Kerala High Court has ordered that the National Medical Commission’s (NMC) decision to charge government college fees for medical courses offered by private institutions won’t be applicable in the state. The court said that there was no classification of Government Quota or Management Quota in the state after the implementation of the Kerala Medical Education Act in 2017, reported LiveLaw.
All the admission were provided through a common process and the rates were fixed by a statutory body, the Admission and Fee Regulatory Committee (AFRC). The uniform fee was decided after evaluating the expenses to run the college.
Hence the new direction did not hold any relevance in the case of private colleges in the state.
The single judge bench of the Kerala HC noted that the implementation of the NMC order may lead to arbitrary results.
Read | From Next Year, 50% Seats in Private Medical Colleges to be Offered at Govt College Fee
“If the OM is directed to be enforced in such manner, it will indubitably lead to a piquant predicament where the fee for the balance 50 % seats in the said colleges will have to be escalated because, otherwise, the institutions cannot sustain, especially since, even as on today, the AFRC is fixing the minimum requisite fee for all students, ” the court observed.
The Kerala HC judgement was passed in a batch of writ petitions filed against the NMC stipulation.
With an aim to make medical education more accessible, the NMC in February this year ordered a fee cap of 50 per cent of seats in private medical colleges at par with the fee of government medical colleges of the particular state.
The benefit of this fee structure would be first made available to candidates who have availed of government quota seats but are limited to 50 per cent of the total sanctioned strength of the institute.
In case, the government quota seats are fewer than 50 per cent of the total sanctioned seats, the benefits will be extended to the remaining students purely based on merit.
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