The Kerala Supreme Court has ordered that the decision of the National Medical Commission (NMC) to charge government tuition fees for medical courses offered by private institutions does not apply in the state. The court said there was no classification of government quotas or management quotas in the state after the implementation of the Kerala Medical Education Act in 2017, LiveLaw reported.
All admissions were granted through a common process and rates were set by a legal body, the Admission and Fee Regulatory Committee (AFRC). The uniform fee was decided after evaluating the cost to run the college.
Therefore, the new direction had no relevance whatsoever in the case of private colleges in the state.
The Kerala HC sole judge noted that the execution of the NMC order may lead to arbitrary results.
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“If the Public Prosecution Service is ordered to be enforced in such a way, this will undoubtedly lead to a spicy situation in which the compensation for the remaining 50% seats in the said colleges will have to be increased because otherwise the institutions cannot sustain, especially because, as today, the AFRC sets the minimum required fee for all students,” the court noted.
The Kerala HC judgment was delivered in a series of subpoenas filed against the NMC provision.
With the goal of making medical education more accessible, in February this year, the NMC imposed a fee cap of 50 percent of seats in private medical colleges, equivalent to the reimbursement of state medical agencies.
The benefit of this fee structure would be made available first to candidates who have taken advantage of government quota seats, but are limited to 50 percent of the institute’s total sanctioned power.
In the event that the government quota seats are less than 50 percent of the total number of sanctioned seats, the benefits will be extended to the remaining students on a merit basis only.
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