Bill cuts no. of members in med fee regulatory panel

Thiruvananthapuram: The state Assembly passed the Kerala Medical Education (regulation and control of admission to the private medical education institutions) Amendment Bill 2019 on Thursday.

The Bill aims at cutting down the number of members in the fee regulatory committee and admission supervisory committee for self-financing medical colleges. The existing committee consists of 10 members. As per the new decision, the committee is divided into two: one for admission supervision with five members and the other for fee regulation with six members.

A retired judge of High Court will be the chairperson and the Health and Family Welfare secretary will be member secretary of the admission supervisory committee. The members are a representative of the Medical Council of India, law secretary, commissioner for entrance examinations, and a person selected by the committee belonging to SC/ST.

The fee regulatory committee will consist of a retired judge of High Court (chairperson), Health and Family Welfare secretary (member secretary), a representative of the Medical

Council of India, one chartered accountant and an independent person nominated by the government in consultation with the chairman (members).

The decision to cut the number of members of the  fee regulatory and admission supervisory committee for medical education was taken after the orders  issued between 2016-17 and 2018-19 by them were set aside by a Division Bench of the Kerala High Court earlier this year.

It was while considering a batch of 26 petitions filed by a few private self-financing medical colleges that the court passed the order.

The petitioners contended that they had absolute authority to fix the fee.