No hike in MBBS fee for now

Bhanu P Lohumi

Tribune News Service

Shimla, June 25

There will be no hike in fee for MBBS course in the three existing government medical colleges and same fee structure will be applicable to two new colleges, functional from this year.

The Cabinet has approved same fee structure for all five colleges and decided that there will be no hike in the fee.

With three new colleges coming up with 100 MBBS seats, the number of seats in government colleges has increased to 500 and 75 seats will be filled on all-India basis while 34 seats have been reserved for NRIs and 20 for ESI students in Mandi college.

Approving the fee structure for Dr YS Parmar Government Medical College, Nahan, last year, the government had increased the fee for MBBS courses in Indira Gandhi Medical College, Shimla, and Dr Rajendra Prasad Medical College, Tanda (Kangra), by 33 per cent and the same fee structure has been approved for Lal Bahadur Shastri Medical College, Mandi, and Pt Jawaharlal Medical College, Chamba, admitting the first batch of MBBS from this year.

The Medical Council of India (MCI) had given a letter of permission for admitting 100 MBBS students each to Mandi and Chamba colleges from this year and also renewed the permission to admit the second batch of MBBS to Nahan college.

The admissions will be made on the basis of the NEET merit through centralised counselling for all colleges by Himachal Pradesh University and 150 seats in the lone medical college would also be filled through centralised counselling, sources in the Health Department said.

There will be separate faculty for each college and if the NRI seats remain vacant, these will revert to government but the fee will higher and on a par with the fee for management quota seats in private medical colleges.

The government had hiked the fee for the MBBS courses last year from Rs 45,000 to Rs 60,000 in the first year while the fee for second, third, fourth and fifth was increased from Rs 37,000 to Rs 50,000 per annum.

Besides, Rs 25,000 (approximately) is payable for availing hostel facility which included rent, electricity and water charges, utensils, mess servant charges, etc. The tuition fee was increased by Rs 10,000, admission fee, student fee, medical fund and refundable security by Rs 1,000 each.

However, the fee for NRI quota seats was increased substantially from $13,000(Rs 8.65 lakh) to $20,000 (Rs 13.32 lakh) per annum, implying that the total additional burden for the full course will be about Rs 23.50 lakh. All government medical colleges are affiliated to HPU but the government is all set to open a medical university in Mandi and all medical, dental, nursing and paramedical institutions will deemed to be affiliated to the new university.