Congress leader Jairam Ramesh on Wednesday made a plea in Rajya Sabha to regulate fees of private medical colleges. He also called for an increase in the number of government medical colleges.
Raising the issue during the Zero Hour mention, he said that only 53 per cent of all medical institutions in the country are government colleges and the rest are private colleges. He added that the number of private schools has been increasing over the last few years.
He added that in 2017, the government came up with the National Medical Commission Bill (NMC) to regulate fees and all other charges for not more than 40 per cent of seats in private medical colleges. Later the standing Committee changed it to at least 50 per cent. He, however, highlighted that the high fees charged by private medical colleges on seats are outside the NMC’s purview.
“We must increase the population of government medical colleges (and) we must strictly regulate the fees of all medical institutions including private institutions. The fee policy currently is to ‘pay now learn later’ but it should be ‘learn now pay later’,” said the parliamentarian.
Adding that there is an acute shortage of medical doctors and public health professionals in this country, he added, “The belief that private medical education will form the foundation of medical education in this country is deeply, deeply flawed and deeply dangerous,” reported The Indian Express.
Meanwhile, India has around 90,000 seats for MBBS seats whereas around 16 lakh students appear for its entrance test across India. At least 47,000 seats are in government colleges, where fees are nominal ranging between Rs 50,000 to Rs 80,000 annually, whereas in 42,000 private colleges fees, the fees average at Rs 16 lakh to 20 lakh annually, reported News18 earlier.
This year, for medical college admissions, the government has lifted the upper age limit hence making seats across medical colleges available to a larger number of students including those who could not clear NEET (medical entrance exam) in their first attempt as well as those who are paramedics and have passed class 12 with physics, chemistry, and biology as core subjects.
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