Madras HC reserves order on plea challenging NMC Fee order
Chennai: While considering the plea challenging the fee order by the National Medical Commission (NMC) for the 50% seats in the private medical colleges, the Madras High Court on Wednesday reserved the order.
The High Court bench comprising of Chief Justice Munishwar Nath Bhandari and Justice N Mala reserved its order after questioning how the Commission would justify charging more fees from the 50% students and less fees from the other half.
Apart from this the bench also sought to know from the Commission how the system would work if the colleges failed to fill up the 50% seats for which the students have to pay a hefty amount, adds Live Law.
On the other hand, the counsel appearing for the NMC and other concerned authorities, ASG R Sankaranarayanan stressed upon the need for the private medical colleges to take part in the welfare mechanism.
Medical Dialogues had earlier reported that complaining about the NMC Fee order for the 50% seats in the private medical colleges, the institutes and deemed to be universities had approached the Madras High Court.
In the concerned Fee order issues back in February 2022, NMC the Apex Medical Body had clarified that the fees of 50 per cent seats in the private medical colleges would be at par with government medical colleges of that particular State/UT.
"After extensive consultations, it has been decided that the fee of the 50 per cent seats in the private medical colleges and deemed universities should be at par with the fee in the government medical colleges of that particular State and UT. The benefit of this fee structure would be first made available to those candidates who have availed government quota seats, but are limited to the extent of 50 per cent of the total sanctioned strength of the respective medical college/deemed university," NMC had mentioned in the notification.
"However, if the government quota seats are less than 50 per cent of total sanctioned seats, the remaining candidates would avail the benefit of a fee equivalent to the government medical college fees, based purely on the merit," NMC had added.
However, no matter how promising this sounds to the medical aspirants, who choose to leave India and move abroad for cheaper medical education, such a rule fails to take into consideration the plights if the private medical college managements who pay lakhs and crores of money to set up the infrastructure.
Therefore, upset with the NMC order, the management of private medical college had urged the Union Health Ministry to direct NMC for withdrawing the diktat. The Apex medical body, however, did not withdraw its decision and consequently, a host of private medical colleges and deemed to be universities recently approached the Madras HC seeking relief.
In their plea, the colleges challenged the Constitutional validity of Section 10 (1) (i) of the National Medical Commission Act of 2019 under which NMC had issued the concerned office memorandum regarding the fee at private medical colleges. Praying the court to quash the concerned memorandum, the senior counsel for one of the institutes, Vijay Narayan informed the court about the heavily subsidized fee in the government medical colleges and pointed out that it would be impossible for the private medical institutes to charge similar amount of fees for 50% of their total seats.
One of the colleges argued that NMC had violated the fundamental right for establishing or administering medical institutes secured under Article 19(1) (g). The college also contended that the NMC direction would result in discrimination in the fee structure since the students pursuing medical education in 50% of the seats would have to bear the cost of education for the other half of students.
As per the latest media report by Live Law, during the urgent hearing of the case on Wednesday, the counsel for NMC, ASG R Sankaranarayanan explained before the court about the need for the private medical colleges to participate in the welfare mechanism.
At this outset, he also referred to several judgments by the Supreme Court in order to support his argument that the States must take charge for regulating the fees charged by the private medical colleges. In this respect, the ASG also emphasized on how the State needs to ensure that the private medical institutes should not collect fees with a motive for profit.
Meanwhile, the Senior Counsel appearing for one of the medical colleges, PS Raman argued that the NMC fee order violated the Article 14 of the Constitution as the States collect different fees in the government medical colleges and therefore separate private colleges would need to levy different fees.
The counsel further contended the Private medical colleges would not be able to manage their expenses if they could not charge such fees. Therefore, he suggested that the NMC could pay subsidies to the private medical colleges and consequently the private institutes would collect fees at par with the government medical colleges.
After considering the arguments by both the parties, the court asked the council how the NMC could charge more fees for half of the students and charge less for the other half. The court also questioned how the system would work if the colleges were not able to fill the remaining 50% seats in the high fees category. Finally, the Court reserved its order on the plea on Wednesday.
Also Read: Madras HC agrees for Urgent Hearing on plea challenging NMC Fee Order
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