Students who secured a seat in the post-graduate medical courses in private medical colleges but were not admitted by the institutions, staged a protest at Dr. Pinnamaneni Siddhartha Medical College at Gannavaram on Wednesday.
The NTR University of Health Sciences asked students who secured seats in the counselling held for PG medical courses to join their respective colleges by June 10.
Managements’ contention
The government had slashed the fee structure for medical and dental courses through the the AP Higher Education Regulatory and Monitoring Commission (APHERMC) and issued GOs 56 and 57 to this effect. Calling the fee structure ‘unviable’, managements of private medical and dental colleges approached the High Court.
Students who have secured seats, but were not being admitted by the colleges demanded that the colleges implement the new fee structure stipulated in GO 56.
On Wednesday, they gathered outside the Dr. Pinnamaneni Siddhartha Medical College and protested raising slogans such as ‘We want justice’.
The protesting students and a few parents said that through GO 56, the government had brought the PG medical course within the reach of the common man. But the private college managements, which had been fleecing the public, refused to take them in.
The Commission had fixed the fees for PG medical and dental courses in private unaided colleges for 2020-21, 2021-22 and 2022-23 using 2016-17 as the base year. Calling it unviable, the managements announced that they would not admit students in 2020-2021.
It is a general practice to fix the fee structure taking he previous academic year as the base year. The Commission members said there was an unreasonable increase in the fee in 2017-18 and the fee was fixed by the then government by consulting college managements and not the Admission and Fee Regulatory Committee.
“In order to help the students, we decided to consider 2016-17 as the base year,” explained one of the members.
