Hyderabad: Strained relations between Telangana and the Andhra Pradesh governments has put managements of medical colleges in a dilemma. Unless both governments resolve the issue, fee revision for medical courses that is due this year, will not be possible.
Officials of the Education department are worried that unless fee revision issue is resolved, Eamcet counselling cannot be initiated for medical admissions this year. Since common counselling for both the states has to be conducted for medical admissions this year, there cannot be differential fees in both states.
The two states will have to arrive at a consensus on revision of fees or keeping it unchanged. However, the education department officials and managements of colleges are sceptical about any meeting being held between education ministers of both the states at this stage when tempers are running high on both the sides over important issues like Polavaram, power purchase agreements, fee reimbursement, Krishna water issues etc.
Both state governments are running administration from different blocks of the same Secretariat premises. However, there has not been a single meeting between ministers from either sides so far to resolve issues, although both have been levelling allegations and counter allegations against each other at media conferences. The relations were further strained after barricades guarded by CRPF jawans were put up on Saturday dividing the Secretariat of the two states and completely restricting movement of staff between the blocks.
Telangana deputy chief minister T. Rajaiah, who also holds medical education portfolio said, “Though we are open and positive from our side to resolve medical fees issue, there has been no response from the AP government. They must realise that any deadlock over the issue will hurt the career of students from both states. A decision on whether to revise the fees or keep it unchanged has to be taken unanimously by both the government to enable the commencement of Eamcet medical counselling.”
College managements are worried how the fee issue will be resolved without any initiative from either of the governments. "The fee revision was due last year but then Kiran Kumar Reddy government put it on hold with assurances that it would be revised this year. We agreed to it. But with the bifurcation of state, the issue is back to square one. We are clueless about how to proceed further with no initiative from either government," said Mr C.Malla Reddy, Malkajgiri MP and representative of medical colleges association.
