Dejected by apathetic attitude of the State administration on steep hike of the MBBS fees, the parents of the students of Swami Ram Himalayan University ( SRHU) are planning to knock at the doors of Uttarakhand High Court for justice.
The parents allege that the university in violation of all norms has hiked the fees of MBBS course by 300 percent recently.
Emboldened by the decision given in its favour by the “Fee Appellate Authority’ on July 5, the management of SRHU has hiked the fees of State quota MBBS students from Rs 4lakh to Rs 10 lakh and All India quota from Rs 5 lakh to Rs 15 lakh per year. The parents are now insisting that since the Uttarakhand HC in an order dated June 12 had termed both the ‘Fee Committee’ and‘ Appellate Authority’ dysfunctional, the Appellate Authority’s decision to allow SHRU increase its fee is illegal.
The patron of the Private Medical University Parents association, Ravindra Jugran told The Pioneer that it is interesting to note that the appellate authority which was termed dysfunctional by HC, allowed the University to increase its fees. He said that both the Fee Committee and Appellate Authority should have retired judges as members and in absence of them both of them are at present dysfunctional in the State. He expressed surprise at the fact that both the higher education department which oversees the Appellate authority and the medical education department ignored the HC order while approving the fee hike.
It is worth mentioning here that the SRHU and the Sri Guru Ram Rai University steeply hiked the MBBS fees in March this year following which a students’ initiated a protest. After the protest these Universities rolled back the fee hike.
Despite SC ruling
The Supreme Court (SC) in a landmark decision had directed that a Fee Fixation Committee headed by a retired judge of High Court (HC) should be constituted in every State and this committee should decide the fee structure of private medical colleges. However in Uttarakhand, the private universities SRHU and SGRU claim that since they are universities they have right to decide the fee as per the Universities Act. The issue is now pending in the HC which has directed that these colleges should continue to charge the old fee till the matter is decided by it. The HC also directed that the students while taking admission should give an undertaking that they would deposit the difference of fee paid by them and the fee once decided by the fee committee or the court.