Thiruvananthapuram: The admission and fee regulatory committee’s decision to approve the fee for MBBS and BDS course ‘provisionally’ is against the provisions of the Kerala Medical Education (Regulation and Control of Admission to Private Medical Educational Institutions) Ordinance 2017. Sources said that the committee was forced to ‘provisionally’ approve the fee as the self-financing medical colleges did not provide the documents and records on time.
Committee chairman Justice R. Rajendra Babu told Deccan Chronicle that the committee required time for calling for the documents for fixing the tuition fee as per the procedure prescribed in the ordinance. However, as per the academic calendar published by the Supreme Court, the last date to close the admission is August 30. If the committee did not decide the fee, the colleges would have prescribed an exorbitant amount like '15 lakh. This would have caused issues during admissions, Justice Babu said.
However, the fee was fixed haphazardly though the government had promised to streamline the process this year. The ordinance had to be promulgated twice as it had lapsed because the Assembly did not pass the law for the same. As a result, the ordinance issued in April had to be reissued on June 1. The panel which was appointed by the state government in December, 2016, did not get the time to scrutinise documents as prescribed under the ordinance.
As per Section II (i) of the ordinance, the committee has to fix the fee after considering factors such as location of the private aided or unaided medical educational institutions, the nature of the medical course, the cost of land and buildings, the available infrastructure and other equipment, teaching and non-teaching staff, the expenditure on administration and maintenance of medical educational institutions, a reasonable surplus required for growth and development of the medical educational institution and any other relevant factor.
