Chennai: The state government has informed the Madras high court that it has authorised the committee constituted for fixation of fee in respect of self-financing professional colleges under the chairmanship of Justice N.V. Balasubramanian, a retired judge of the Madras high court, to fix fee for the diploma courses in self-financing polytechnic colleges and hotel management and catering technology institutions.
Mr S. Sivashanmugaraja, director of Adidravidar welfare department, stated this in his counter affidavit filed through additional government pleader P Sanjay Gandhi before Justice V. Ramasubramanian, in response to the petition filed by the Tamil Nadu Unaided Polytechnic Management Association.On September 11, 2012, the government issued an order, by which guidelines have been issued for granting concession under Centrally-assisted scheme to all kinds of non-refundable fee components paid by SC/ST students. As per the order, the amount eligible for reimbursement of fees in respect of SC/ST students under free quota seats was fixed at Rs 6,500 and under payment quota seats, it was fixed at Rs 21,700.
Contending that before issuance of this G.O. in 2012, members of the petitioner’s association were collecting Rs30,000 fee from all students, the petitioner filed the present petition to direct the government to revise the applicability of the G.O. insofar as polytechnic colleges were concerned to enable the authorities to reimburse existing fee of Rs30,000 for each student for the academic years 2012-13 and 2013-14.
In his counter, Sivashanmugaraja submitted that in the wake of the G.O. dated November 18, 2014, authorising Justice N.V. Balasubramanian committee to fix the fee, the department was ready to comply with the recommendations, if any, regarding fixation of fee by the committee. With regard to the prayer for reimbursement of Rs30,000, he said it cannot be entertained. The petitioner association were not supposed to collect Rs30,000 uniformly as these member institutions will not have the uniform infrastructure facilities available, the investment made, salaries paid to the teaching staff, future plans for expansions, etc.
The act of the petitioner will, in fact, sabotage the true intention of the government to help underprivileged SC/ST students. Moreover, the academic year 2012-13 and 2013-14 were already completed. Also, the post-metric scholarship amount to eligible students of SC/ST has already been sanctioned in respect of the above years, as per 2012 G.O., he added.
