Pondicherry: Chief Minister N. Rangasamy announced in the Assembly on Monday that legislation would be passed in the current session for equal sharing of seats between the Government and managements in private professional colleges in the Union Territory.

Intervening in a debate on the call attention motion tabled separately by A. Anbalagan (All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam) and by R. Viswanathan (Communist party of India) and S.P. Sivakumar (Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam), the Chief Minister agreed that every year students were facing an ordeal because of the uncertainty in getting seats under Government quota.

The members sought immediate steps to fix the quota and finalise the fee structure in private medical colleges, after the question hour.

In an effort to put an end to this, the Government had now decided to enact legislation fixing 50 per cent of seats in each of the professional colleges under Government quota, Mr. Rangasamy said. Claiming that students' interests were paramount, he said that in all, 205 seats were finalised under Government quota in six private medical colleges this year through an agreement with the managements.

MCI approval

Earlier tabling the call attention motion, Mr. Anbalagan said that instead of fixing a definite percentage of the seats in private medical colleges, the Government had been signing ad hoc agreements with the managements on fixing seats. He also alleged that students were admitted to colleges that lacked approval from the Medical Council of India.

Mr. Viswanathan (CPI) wanted to know who finalised minority status for some colleges here. He appealed to the Government to arrange for frequent inspection of those colleges.

Mr. Sivakumar (DMK) said that some of the private medical colleges were violating norms and throwing the Government directives and of the University Grants Commission to the winds.

They were fixing the fees very high and were holding students to ransom. Some institutions were also claiming "deemed university" status. He urged the Government to take a serious look at such colleges.

The Chief Minister said that the Government would soon initiate steps to ensure that a ceiling was adopted for the fees for other classifications apart from the tuition fee fixed by the Fees Committee.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail