CHENNAI: A new law to regulate intake of students and fee structures in medical and engineering colleges will be passed before the beginning of the next academic year, Union Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss has said.

It will provide for concrete mechanisms that all government and private colleges must implement. Any failure will attract prosecution. A joint venture of the Ministries of Human Resource Development and Health, a basic version of the legislation has been circulated to all stakeholders, eliciting their opinion.

The law will seek to fix the ratio of management and government quota seats in private medical colleges, eliminating the different patterns currently being followed by States. Abiding by the August 2003 Supreme Court judgment in the Islamic Academy case, each State Government will appoint two committees for regulating the fee structure and management quota.

The new regulation will standardise quota intake in the 235 medical colleges (including 108 private ones) across the country, the Minister said in an interview on Saturday.

As per the Court ruling, individual institutions can also fix their own fee structure, subject to the approval of the committee. "I have received several complaints from MPs about colleges charging exorbitant fees. A college in Andhra Pradesh is allegedly charging Rs. 5 lakhs per annum for a basic medical degree," he explained. There are also complaints that some colleges are charging students for the whole five-year period of the course. "This is illegal. No college can demand fees for the entire course period. He said parents or students could approach the respective committees in their State and prefer a complaint against the college.

The new law will also find ways to prevent the mushrooming of unaffiliated institutions offering unauthorised professional courses of study for short periods, he said in reply to a question.

While the Health Ministry considers the new law along with the HRD Ministry, it will also draw up regulations to remove the disparity in the spread of medical colleges all over the country.

"About 155 medical colleges are in six States — Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu. We need more colleges in States such as Bihar, Orissa, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Uttaranchal, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan and the Centre will ensure that there is an equitable distribution of colleges across the nation," he said.

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