Govt agreement with pvt med colleges against spirit of SC

order: BJP Kochi, Sep 20 (PTI) BJP today alleged that the Keralagovernment’s agreement with self-financing medical collegemanagements on seat sharing and fee structure for MBBS anddental courses was against the spirit of the recent SupremeCourt order that the state has power to regulate admissionsand fix fees in such institutes. Levelling serious corruption charges against thegovernment over the matter, senior BJP leader V Muraleedharandemanded immediate resignation of Health Minister K KShailaja. Shailaja held meetings with private medical managementsassociation representatives, based on which both partiesagreed to increase existing fees for all, barring 20 per centseats allocated for students belonging to BPL category. Muraleedharan, also a former president of the state BJPunit, said the apex court’s Constitution Bench had on May 2said that "fundamental rights of private unaided professionalcolleges must yield to public interest and rights of thestudents at large." He alleged that the state government deliberately did notcite this key judgement before Kerala High Court when itconsidered a petition by private medical college managements,challenging the government order, directing the Commissionerfor Entrance Examination to hold admission to all seats,including NRI and management, in self-financing medical anddental colleges in the state. "By doing so, the state government was indirectly helpingprivate medical college managements to win the case," he said. "Later, the agreement reached between the stategovernment and private medical college managements paved theway for them to amass huge capitation fees from students fromall sections. It is scandalous," he said. Muraleedharan said the Central government and SupremeCourt had said that admission for medical and dental coursesshall be conducted from the NEET list on the basis of merit. "But here in Kerala, the stands taken by the Centralgovernment and the apex court on the issue are violated,"Muraleedharan argued. Terming the agreement between the state government andself-financing college managements as "illegal", he said thestate BJP would seek all legal options to challenge it beforethe court of law. PTI TGB APRPMS