Kerala to Initiate Revenue Recovery Procedure against SR Medical College to repay Rs 4.67 crore fees collected from students

Thiruvananthapuram: Initiating action against Varkala-based SR Medical College, the State Government of Kerala is starting a revenue recovery (RR) procedure against the private medical college.

After the college lost its recognition, its students had to be redeployed in various other medical colleges. Thereafter, even though the High Court directed the medical college to pay back the fees collected from the students, the management could not comply with the order. Now the State has initiated revenue recovery process to repay Rs 4.67 crore fees collected from the students.

Meanwhile, taking note of the fact that the revenue recovery process will take at least six months to complete, the State has decided to release the amount from the State's exchequer for paying the colleges where the students have joined. Initially, as a first installment, the State has released Rs 2.20 crore.

SR Medical College is a self-financing medical college in the state of Kerala. The institution had received the MCI nod for the MBBS course first in 2016, hence got the essentiality certificate, after that, it did not receive the recognition in the coming years due to inadequate infrastructure.

Also Read: NO Relief to SR Medical College: Kerala HC upholds cancellation of Essentiality Certificate

According to MCI, post-2016, on the assessment of the infrastructural and teaching facilities available carried out by the Council for the grant of Letter of Permission (LoP) for the academic year 2016-17, the severe shortfall was noticed and the executive committee decided to recommend to the Central Government not to issue a letter of permission. Then the college submitted a compliance report which was again subjected to compliance verification and subsisting deficiencies were found in the compliance verification also.

Accepting the recommendations of the MCI, the Centre refused to issue LoP for the academic year 2016-17. Thereafter, on the basis of the approval of the Supreme Court the mandated oversight committee, LoP dated 20.8.2016 was issued subject to condition that all subsisting deficiencies would be rectified. After such conditional approval, affidavits were submitted by the college affirming rectification of deficiencies reported on 10.2.2016 and an assessment was carried out in December 2016. Subsisting deficiencies were found in such assessment. The Council, therefore, recommended to the Central Government to debar the SR Medical College from admitting students for two academic years, that is, 2017-18 and 2018-19.

Back in 2019, the essentiality certificate of the medical college was withdrawn by the erstwhile MCI and the Council had also asked the State to redploy the students in other colleges.

As per the latest media report by the Times of India, even though the students had been shifted to three other self-financing medical colleges, the college management was not ready to transfer the fees that they had already collected as per the directive of the fee regulatory committee.

Consequently, the students approached the High Court and the HC bench urged those three medical colleges not to collect any fees from the students until a final decision was taken in this regard. Later, issuing an order, the HC bench had served an ultimatum to the college management for remitting the fees to the three medical colleges where the students had been redeployed.

However, since the college did not comply with the order issued on December 19, 2022, the HC directed the Government to initiate the revenue recovery proceedings against the college. Further, the court warned that if the government does not complete the revenue recovery process within six months, then the State will have to remit the fees of the students, adds a recent report by the Times of India.

In this backdrop, the government has now decided to release the amount first and later initiate the revenue recovery proceedings. Issuing an order in this regard, the State Government stated, “The director of medical education shall take necessary steps to speed up RR proceedings against the assets of the SR Medical College and Research Centre, Varkala, in consultation with district collector, Thiruvananthapuram, and submit status report to government in every fortnight.”

Also Read: Supreme Court cancels MBBS admission to 4 medical colleges in Kerala