The Supreme Court on Monday set aside an order issued by the previous Telugu Desam Party government in Andhra Pradesh headed by N Chandrababu Naidu in 2017, benefitting his cabinet colleague P Narayana by prescribing a seven-fold increase in MBBS fees that made it Rs 24 lakh per annum.
A division bench of Supreme Court comprising Justices M R Shah and Sudhanshu Dhulla set aside a special leave petition filed by Narayana Medical College challenging an earlier high court order of September 2019 striking down the fee increase and ordering refund to students admitted in the college since the academic year 2017-18.
According to Dr Supreeth Kumar Reddy Kunnuru, one of the respondents in the case, the Supreme Court bench ordered that the medical college refund excess fee to the extent of Rs 36,90,000 to the students along with interest.
As per the GO No. 167 dated June 18, 2011, the medical college was supposed to collect Rs 3,70,000 per annum, which amounts to Rs 11,10,000 for the three years starting 2017-18, while the college collected Rs 48 lakh.
Similar excess fee was collected by two other medical colleges – NRI Medical College and Pinnamaneni Siddhartha Medical College. The Supreme Court ordered that these two colleges, too, return the excess fee to the students.
Interestingly, all these students secured top ranks in All India NEET super speciality examinations, but the TDP government issued an illegal GO even for merit students.
“We want to take this matter to the notice of chief minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy, chief secretary Sameer Sharma and Admissions and Fee Regulatory Committee (AFRC) and request them to direct the colleges to refund the excess fee immediately to all the students,” Dr Supreeth said.
While delivering the judgement, the Supreme Court bench made some serious comments against the previous TDP government and the private medical colleges. It said education is not the business to earn profit and the tuition fee shall always be affordable.
The apex court dismissed the petition of Narayana with cost of Rs 5 lakh to be borne equally by the petitioner college and state government and deposited in court within six weeks. The amount was directed for use in legal services by the Supreme Court Mediation and Conciliation Committee and the National Legal Services Authority.
The bench held the order passed by the TDP government to be “wholly impermissible and most arbitrary”. The court even went to the extent of saying that the hike was done “only with a view to favour or oblige the private medical colleges.”
