Orissa govt. reduces annual medical college fee

Despite a high rise in the fee structure for medical students in some states the Orissa government has decided to reduce its annual fee of the MBBS students seeking admission for this academic year. Now the annual fee will be somewhere around 4 lakh to 3.75 lakh in the private medical colleges.

States like Maharashtra, Gujarat, West Bengal, and Andhra Pradesh have so far recommended a fee hike of 7.5 percent after the SC appointed Fee Structure Committee cleared the hike in the private unaided medical and dental colleges.

This rise has been protested by students of different states and so in Orissa. Responding the reaction of the student’s community the Orissa government has made reduction in the fee structure for the second time.

Earlier, following other states’ hike structure the Orissa government did also made the annual fee for the MBBS programme to 4.5 lakh from the previous 2.2 lakh. However, this had brought public resentment and eventually the government brought it down to 4 lakh after a mutual understanding between the fee structure committee and representative of private medical colleges.

However, the first reduction of 0.5 lakh was not for any purpose compared to the 2.5 hike and hence the state government forced to further bring it down to 3.75 lakh. The latest fee structure will certainly bring protest from the private institutions who had purposed a fee of 7.8 to 8.5 lakh in front of the Fee Structure Committee.

In fact it was the Fee Structure Committee (FSC) formed with the guidelines of Supreme Court who take into consideration all the demands of the private institutions and then fix an amount. But a sky-high rise of fee can indeed deprive one meritorious student from studying medical. Orissa where there are 750 MBBS and 380 BDS seats, it’s a good move by the government but again the fee should not rise above 3.5 lakh per year as in case of any top most medical college in the country.