The Health Ministry said that once the National Medical Commission (NMC) Bill came into almost 75% of the medical seats will be available at a reasonable fee. The government said that nearly 50% of the medical seats in the nation are in the government colleges which have a nominal fee and the rest 50% will be regulated by the NMC. NMC will replace the corruption-plagued Medical Council of India (MCI).
"In the spirit of federalism, the State governments would still have the liberty to decide fees for remaining seats in private medical colleges based on individual MOUs signed with colleges on the basis of mutual agreement," the ministry said in a statement released to allay fears regarding the NMC Bill.
IMC ACT 1956 has no provision for the fee regulation and as a result some states regulate the fee of private medical seats through the MoUs signed with the college management. Also, the Supreme Court has set up committees to fix fees in private colleges as an interim measure. The committees are headed by retired High Court Judges.
Senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh demanded that government should bring 75 percent seats of the private medical colleges and deemed universities under NMC.
"This provision will open floodgates to privatization in medical education. I believe in privatization. But I do not believe in privatization in medical education," he said and urged all the political parties to support his affiliation.
"There are 76,000 MBBS seats in the country, out of which 40,000 in government colleges and 36,000 in the private sector. Out of 36,000 seats, 30,000 seats are in private colleges and the rest 6,000 seats in deemed universities", Jairam Ramesh said.
However, the health minister said that the legislation is ‘pro-poor’ and said that it will also bring the 50% seats of the private colleges within the reach of the poor meritorious students.
"States also have been providing scholarships based on merit cum means and would normally continue to do so to make medical education affordable to all students," the ministry said in the statement released today.
"We need to balance the interests of the poor but meritorious students and the promoters of the private medical colleges to expand the number of seats on offer. It is not correct to assume that colleges would be free to arbitrarily raise the fees for unregulated seats. The transparency provided by NEXT results would lead to the regulation of fees through market forces. Colleges would have to provide quality of education commensurate to the fees charged by them, otherwise there would be no takers for their management quota seats," the statement added.