Maharashtra: Medical institutes declare their fee for PG seats On DMER directive

Mumbai: In an interesting development, deemed universities have declared their fee for post graduate seats after the DMER asked them to do so, in order to maintain transparency and ensure that fee in these institutions does not exceed that fixed by the fee regulating authority.

While the state quota fees (as decided by the Fee Regulatory Authority) range from Rs 8 lakh to Rs 25 lakh, deemed medical colleges charge upto Rs 75 lakh for NRI quotas, reveals the data with the DMER.

D Y Patil Medical College in Pune charges Rs 75 lakh from students in the NRI quota and Bharati Vidyapeeth University Medical College in Pune charges Rs 54 lakh.

Among private colleges, S K Navale Medical University in Punecharges a fee of Rs 9 lakh for its merit quota students. However, for its management quota seats charges go upto Rs 95 lakh.

According to the latest decision of the private and deemed medical colleges charging sums exceeding figures fixed by the Fee Regulatory Authority for their Management Quota seats are likely to face penalty imposed by the state government .

"Strict action will be taken against such colleges. We will not only cancel admissions in such cases but will also impose a fine as per the Maharashtra University of Health Sciences Act, 1998," said Pravin Shinghare, Director, State Directorate of Medical Education and Research (DMER) on Thursday. The decision will cover both post-graduate and undergraduate admissions.

The rule has been implemented after the DMER was given the authority to conduct admissions to all medical institutes this year by the Medical Council of India.

"We have made it very clear that we will not allow any admission unless the medical institutes declare their fees. The fees will be displayed on the website of DMER for the benefit of aspirants," said Shinghare,

"The institutes charge different fees under the management quota for different streams of PG courses. Whether this is legal is to be decided by the FRA," said Shinghare, promising that aspirants will soon be able to see the fees charged by all medical institutes — government, deemed and private — under three sections of state quota, institutional quota and NRI quota.

The DMER is responsible for fixing the fee for private and government medical institutes as they come under FRA — an independent decision-making body- as per the Maharashtra Educational Institutions (Regulation of Collection of Fee) Act, 2011.

Shinghare reminded said that a Supreme Court verdict allows private and deemed colleges to adopt a cross-subsidy model in which case, the institutes can charge five times the base fee from students in the NRI and management quotas Shinghare said that any institute that exceeds this mandate will be penalised.

However, an FRA membersaid that the SC ruling to adopt a cross subsidy model may not be applicable to Maharashtra state, as post verdict an Act for fee regulation has already come into force.

"The verdict does not apply to the FRA as we are ruled by the Maharashtra Educational Institutions (Regulation of Collection of Fee) Act," he added.

He did not rule out the possibility of the FRA adopting the SC verdict of cross-subsidy. "In that case, if the NRI quota fee is increased, the fee for merit quota students will come down substantially," he said.

Currently, the FRA decides the fee structure for merit quota students. "As of now, the fee decided by us for merit quota, management quota and NRI quota are the same. We decide the fee per student per course. This is binding to all colleges and they cannot charge excess fee under the name of management quota," he informed the Indian Express.He termed charging varied fee for different courses by institutes as illegal.

He revealed that private medical colleges had given their assent to fix the management quota fee as directed by the government, under certain conditions.

"The government should allow us to fix the fee as per the cost of education incurred by it in government colleges. So, if a government is spending Rs 25 lakh per student per year as stated in the budget, the FRA should not ask us to fix the fee below that, " said Kamal Kishor Kadam, President of the Unaided Medical College Association,

To check out the fee structure of private medical colleges in Maharahtra, click on the following link

http://www.dmer.org/new/Fee structure of Private unaided Medical & Dental Institutes.htm