House unites to pass Bill on medical colleges

House unites to pass Bill on medical colleges

What has happened?

The Assembly on Wednesday unanimously passed a Bill regularising the controversial admission of 180 students to the Karuna and Kannur self-financing private medical colleges in 2016-17.

To save the future of the students

Kerala Professional Colleges (Regularisation of Admission in Medical Colleges) Bill, 2018 was a one-off bipartisan law to save the future of the NEET-qualified students who found their prospects imperilled after the Supreme Court upheld the State Admission Supervisory Committee decision to annul their admissions after it found that the colleges had conducted the process in an opaque and illegal manner. 

Flawed process

• The flawed process had occurred when the admission to professional colleges was in transition from the State entrance list to NEET.
• The colleges ignored the orders of the regulatory committee and admitted students.
• The colleges had refused to cooperate with the government in the admission process or concede 50% of their seats to State merit and violated the law that prohibited capitation fee and exploitative tuition charges
• The students realised that the colleges had cheated them when the Supreme Court threw out the management’s prayer to regularise the admissions they had illegally conducted.

Fine proposed

The legislation proposed a fine of Rs. 3 lakh for every student admitted by the colleges.