M A I N   N E W S

Private medical colleges continue fleecing students
Prabhjot Singh
Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, September 19
Directions of the apex court and subsequently of the State Fee Fixation Committee notwithstanding, students of private medical and dental colleges in Punjab allege that college managements are forcing them to pay much more than the approved rates.

While MBBS students in Government Medical Colleges pay about Rs 26,500 per annum as fee, including hostel charges, their counterparts in private medical colleges are being forced to dish out Rs 3,58,250 per annum. Interestingly, the committee has fixed the total fee for MBBS students at Rs 1,41,000 per annum.

“Unfortunately, neither the committee nor the Department of Medical Education and Research has been able to get the students or their parents any reprieve from the managements of private medical colleges, including those run by the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee(SGPC),” alleges an aggrieved parent.

Parents of MBBS students of Sri Guru Ram Dass Institute of Medical Sciences and Research had made a written representation to Justice G.R. Majithia, Chairman of the Fee-Deciding Committee, on July 21 alleging that the college management was charging far in excess of the approved rates of fee and other charges.

For example, they held that against a tuition fee of Rs 1.10 lakh for private medical colleges, students were being asked to pay Rs 2 lakh each. The college managements were also charging Rs 20,000 each as hostel fee and security against the approved rate of Rs 15,000 each.

Private medical colleges were also demanding or charging certain other heads which were not approved by the Fee-Deciding Committee. These included fee for augmentation and expansion of facilities, amalgamated fund, college security and miscellaneous charges, which come to Rs 1.18 lakh per student per annum.

Further, against the prescribed annual total fee of Rs 2,49,625 in their own prospectus, the management of the Sri Guru Ram Dass Institute of Medical Sciences and Research was demanding Rs 3,58,250 this year.

The decision of the Sri Guru Ram Dass Institute to raise the tuition fee from Rs 1.10 lakh to Rs 2 lakh, they alleged, had already been stuck down by the Punjab and Haryana High Court. Still the management was demanding Rs 2 lakh as tuition fee for the new academic year. Some of the parents produced the fee receipts of their wards showing Rs 2 lakh as tuition fee.

The parents maintained that even upper middle-class families could not afford to get their wards educated in private medical and dental institutes because of the huge fee structure. In Sunam, a private dental college had charged Rs 2,16,500 from a student against the approved annual fee of Rs 72,000.

Though the fee committee had fixed the annual tuition fee at Rs 55,000 for dental colleges, private colleges were still charging Rs 1 lakh. Like private medical colleges, they issued receipts for the amount charged thus showing that it was their writ and not that of the government or the courts.

Though the new fee regime came into being from the last academic session, neither refunds nor adjustment of the excess amounts charged had been made in any of the private medical and dental colleges.

Private dental colleges continued to charge development, amalgamated and miscellaneous funds, which had been prohibited by the Fee Fixation Committee. They were also charging higher rates of security and hostel fees, the parents stated.