Fee charged by private medical colleges should be reasonable: SC

The Supreme Court on Thursday said although private medical colleges have the autonomy to decide on fee, what they charge must be non-exploitative and reasonable.

A bench of Justices L Nageswara Rao and S Ravindra Bhat said though the court is an agreement with the submissions of private medical college management that fee as proposed by them should be considered by the admission and fee regulatory committee, it is no more Res integra that the right conferred on the institutions to fix fee for professional courses is subject to regulation.

The bench pointed out that the fixation of fee payable by students pursuing their medical courses in Kerala since 2017-18 has not been finalised till date.

One college complained of non-finalisation of fee from the year 2016-17 and the students are continuing their education after remitting a provisional fee.

“It need not be reiterated that unaided professional institutions have the autonomy to decide on the fee to be charged, subject to the fee not resulting in profiteering or collection of capitation fee. Regulation of fee is within the domain of the committee which shall ensure that the fee is non-exploitative and reasonable,” court said.

The court termed as an “error” the Kerala High Court’s direction to the Committee to take into account only audited balance sheets, and provisional profit and loss accounts in the absence of audited balance sheets, to fix the fee.

It agreed with the argument of senior advocate Jaideep Gupta, representing the state government, that no fetter can be placed on the exercise of power for fee fixation by the Committee.

The top court, however, directed the committee to expeditiously reconsider the proposals of the private self-financing colleges for fee fixation from 2017-18 onwards.

“It (Committee) can direct the managements to furnish any information that is required for the purpose of arriving at a decision that the fee proposed by the managements is neither excessive nor exploitative in nature,” the court said.