Thiruvananthapuram: There are 943 seats in eight government medical colleges and 1,700 seats in 16 self financing medical colleges. The total seats to be filled from the centralised allotment process to medical colleges were 2,463.
Of the 52,000 seats in engineering, 32,000 will be filled through commissioner for entrance examinations.
According to official figures, 5.44 per cent of the seats are in the state-run government colleges, 3.06 per cent in state-aided sector and remaining in colleges under private management.
As per the communication of the Union health ministry, the admission to entire MBBS, BDS seats including those under minority quota and NRI quota in the Self Financing Medical and Dental colleges in the state will be done through a Centralised Counselling to be done by Commissioner for Entrance Examin-ations from the Kerala State Merit list to be prepared by the CEE on the basis of NEET(UG)-2018 score.
There are 180 engineering colleges in Kerala which include the state-run and self-financed management institutions. Of the 60,000 sanctioned seats in these colleges last year more than 30,000 seats were lying vacant.
As many seats, remained vacant last year, some engineering colleges were closed down and number of seats were reduced in some others.
Early fixing of lower fee to help MBBS students
Justice Rajendra Babu committee has fixed the fee structure for medical colleges even before the announcement of results. The fees for various colleges ranged from Rs 4.85 lakh to Rs 5.5 lakh for 2016-17 and 2018-19.
NRI quota fees for all seats were fixed at Rs 20 lakh. The managements are likely to approach the court against the fee structure.
During the previous years, the fees were decided on the basis of a seat-sharing agreement between the managements and the state government.
However, last year the court had said that the agreement for seat- sharing and fees between the managements and the government was illegal.
Following this, the fee regulatory committee headed by Justice Rajendra Babu recommended a unified fees of Rs 5.5 lakh per annum which was substantially higher and was against the concept of merit seats.
The committee fixed the fees as per the expenditure figures submitted by the self-finance colleges. However, the Supreme Court later allowed the managements to collect Rs 11 lakh as fees.
In 2016, the annual fee in 20 per cent of the total 50 per cent merit seats was fixed at Rs 25,000 to make it affordable to the students from economically weaker sections as per an agreement with the managements. The fee in the remaining 30 percent merit seats was Rs 2.5 lakh. That year, the fee for Rs 35 per cent seats in management quota was Rs 11 lakh and that in NRI quota Rs 15 lakh.
As it became clear that such agreements could not happen, the state government had recently issued guidelines for a new scholarship scheme for funding the entire tuition fees for BPL students admitted to self-financing medical colleges. The corpus for the scholarship fund will be found from the NRI quota fees and also from other resources.
Out of Rs 20 lakh each collected as fees from NRI quota students last year, Rs 5 lakh each has been earmarked for the corpus of the scholarship fund. The corpus fund would be handled by the commissioner for entrance examinations.
