The Supreme Court has held as illegal and unethical the demand for capitation fees by private technical and medical colleges from students, and has directed the Centre to make laws to put an end to such practices which deny admission to meritorious students from financially weak backgrounds in those institutions.
“Collection of large amount by way of capitation fee running into crores of rupees for MBBS and post-graduate seats, exorbitant fee, donation etc, by many of such self- financing institutions, have kept the meritorious financially poor students away from those institutions,” a bench of justices K.S. Radhakrishnan and A.K. Sikri said.
“Pressure, it is also seen, is being extended by various institutions, for the additional intake of students, not always for the benefit of the student community and thereby serve the community, but for their own betterment,” it said. The court said that quality of education has gone down in private colleges which are turning into students financing institutions. It said that government agencies need to introspect on the issue to bring proper legislation. “We cannot lose sight of the fact that these things are happening in our country irrespective of the constitutional pronouncements by this court in TMA Pai Foundation case that there shall not be any profiteering or acceptance of capitation fee etc. Central government, ministry of health and family welfare, central bureau of investigation or the intelligence wing have to take effective steps to undo such unethical practices or else self-financing institutions will turn to be students financing institutions,” it said.
The court said that mushrooming of large number of medical, engineering, nursing and pharmaceutical colleges has definitely affected the quality of education in this country, especially in the medical field which call for serious introspection. “Private medical educational institutions are always demanding more number of seats in their colleges even though many of them have no sufficient infrastructural facilities, clinical materials, faculty members etc,” it said. It also referred to cases in which CBI had to charge sheet the then Union minister of health and family welfare and president of MCI to emphasise that all is not well even at the government level.