Other States - Gujarat   

Govt. streamlines fees in medical colleges

By Manas Dasgupta

GANDHINAGAR MAY 31. Medical education will be costlier in Gujarat from the new academic year. But there will be greater transparency in the admission process with stricter adherence to merit to discourage anyone from becoming a doctor purely on "money-power".

To discipline the self-financing private medical colleges and maintain uniformity in terms of merit, the State Government has streamlined the "fee structure" in medical, dental, physiotherapy as well as ayurvedic and homoeopathy colleges across the State.

The Government has issued orders fixing the fee structure uniformly at Rs. 1.15 lakhs a year, removing different sets of fee structure for "free", "payment" and "non-resident Indian" seats in private colleges. The annual fee structure has been raised to Rs. 70,000 for dental education, Rs. 35,000 for physiotherapy and Rs. 25,000 for homoeopathic and ayurvedic colleges.

The Government has also simultaneously filed a caveat in the Gujarat High Court against all 30 self-financing medical, dental and physiotherapy colleges in the State against securing a stay order on the implementation of the new fee structure.

In the Government-run medical colleges, the annual fee has been raised from Rs. 2,000 to Rs. 6,000 for medical education and from Rs. 1,000 to Rs. 4,000 for dental and Rs. 3,000 for physiotherapy courses. To ensure transparency and merit in admissions to the self-financing private medical colleges, the Government has withdrawn the discretionary powers of the college management in filling up 20 per cent of the seats in their colleges. While 80 per cent of the seats would now have to be filled through the central admission committee, the remaining 20 per cent can be filled by the management only after issuing public advertisements and going strictly by merit. The fee structure would remain the same for the management seats also. Rather they can be charged an additional five per cent for which a separate account would have to be maintained to use the amount thus collected only for providing scholarships to medical students coming from the economically weaker strata of society.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Other States

News: Front Page | National | Southern States | Other States | International | Opinion | Business | Sport | Miscellaneous |
Advts: Classifieds | Employment | Obituary |

Stories in this Section

• Govt. streamlines fees in medical colleges

Copyright © 2003, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu