FRA diktat of uniform fee for all Quota: Private Medical Colleges demand reversal

The private medical colleges have in a quick move after the Fee Regulating Authority came up with a diktat in a circular for them to charge the same fee under various quotas, have asked the state government to issue a directive to the FRA to reverse their decision.

At a meeting between representatives of private medical institutes and the minister of state medical education, the private institutions have demanded that the state government allow them to charge five times the regular fees to NRI students. The state authorities will take a final decision today.

“The FRA is a quasi-judicial body that looks into the fee structure and ensures that institutes don’t indulge in profiteering. They cannot decide the fee structure,” said Kamal Kishore Kadam, president, Association of Management of Unaided Private Medical and Dental Colleges (AMUPMDC).

According to an FRA, member have been found charging three times the fees fixed by the state authority for the 35% seats reserved for management quota and almost five times the regular fees for 15% of NRI seat allocations despite uniform fees directive of the FRA.

To prevent profiteering by charitable trusts the FRA decides fee structure after consideration of expenses incurred by institutions in imparting of medical education.

The see authority plans to cut down fees for academic years 2019-20 to make up for surplus collections by colleges for management and NRI quota during the current academic year.

“We decide the fees for 100% students. We met college authorities twice and told them that they can’t have different fees for different categories,” said the FRA member to HT.

“The extra fees charged by colleges will be considered an income. This amount will be subtracted from the colleges’ expenditure to decide fees for students,” added the FRA official.

However, Kadam said for that private institutions will not be going ahead with their plan to move court presently, and will seek state intervention instead.

In a previous story done by Medical Dialogues the team reported Fee Regulating Authority(FRA), (which decides the tuition charges for all professional colleges in Maharashtra) had made a move to make the fee for all postgraduate courses and medical courses, quota-blind. The FRA on its part is doing this in order to deal severely, with private management alleged attempts to extract crores of rupees for medical seats, under Management and NRI quotas.

Read Also: Maharashtra: Same fee all quotas in PG Medical Admissions, says FRA