The opposition staged a walkout in Kerala Assembly on Tuesday accusing the LDF government of colluding with self-financing medical college managements to jack up fees. The charge is that the latest compromise formula the government had thrashed out with the self-financing managements would allow them to hike the fees and would push students and parents into deep uncertainty.

“The meeting has created a conducive environment for the management to increase the fee. The managements agreed to cooperate on the condition that they would be allowed to hike the fee,” said Congress MLA and former health minister V S Sivakumar while seeking leave for an adjournment motion on the issue of admission to self-financing medical colleges.

As part of the government-management agreement, if there is a delay in the fixation of the fee before the start of the allotment process on July 8, the admissions will go ahead by collecting the last academic year's fee of Rs 5.41 lakh from students. If the Fee Regulatory Commission ends up fixing a higher fee, the students will pay the extra amount later. The students would be asked to furnish a bond for the purpose. The managements want the fee to be more than doubled or trebled, they want it spiked to a level between Rs 12 lakh to Rs 18 lakh.

“There is so much uncertainty now that no student has any idea how much s/he has to pay,” opposition leader Ramesh Chennithala said. He said even fixing last year's fee as the temporary fee is problematic as it was rejected by the High Court.

Sivakumar said the state government has not begun even the preliminary admission procedures though the NEET results were out a month ago. He also accused the government of failing to bring about the necessary amendments to the Medical Education (Regulation and Control of Admissions to Private Medical Colleges) Bill even two years after the High Court had recommended such changes in the original draft.

“The November 2017 order of the High Court had specifically stated that the fee fixation committee should complete its job before the actual admission process starts, which is six months before the allotment process,” Sivakumar said.

He said that very recently, when the draft amendment was drawn up in February, the High Court had once again told the government to fix the fee within two months.

Health minister K K Shylaja said the government had not delayed the admission process. She said the High Court had in November 2017 wanted the jumbo committee doing both fee fixation and admission supervision in the Medical Education Bill to be split into two. “The government promptly split the committee and sent the amended draft of the Bill to the Law Department. The delay was only the usual procedural delay,” the minister said.

She said the ordinance route too could not be resorted to as the Lok Sabha elections came in the way. “We had in fact given the ordinance to the governor. By then the elections were declared and the governor advised that it would be prudent to get the consent of the Election Commission also,” Shylaja said. “The EC gave its consent but by then the election process was on. But we brought the Bill on the first day of this Assembly session and the Bill was passed on June 13. There is no delay as alleged by the opposition,” she added.

The minister also said that with the advent of NEET, the government has no control over the fee structure of managements. “Earlier we could reserve some seats with very low fees but the courts have now struck down the differential fee arrangement,” she said.

In 2016-17, the state government had entered into a consensual agreement with 20 medical colleges in which certain seats were made available for Rs 25,000. “Record number of students were able to study at this fee. But the managements moved the court and the court said differential fee was not possible,” Shylaja said.