‘The legislation is aimed at helping poor and meritorious students’
Minister of State for Medical Education Sharanprakash Patil on Tuesday informed the Legislative Assembly that a new legislation on professional educational institutions for regulating admissions and determining fees would be enacted by the next academic year to help poor and meritorious students.
While replying to a heated debate on the issue by Aravind Limbavali (BJP) and others, the Minister blamed the previous governments for keeping the Karnataka Professional Educational Institutions (Regulation of Admission and Determination of Fee) Act, 2006 in abeyance due to which some problems continue to persist. This triggered a wordy duel. Speaker Kagodu Thimmappa urged the Minister to bring in the legislation in this session itself.
The Minister denied allegations of Mr. Limbavali and C.T. Ravi (BJP) that medical and engineering merit seats had been either surrendered to private college managements or “blocked” by some agents in connivance with officials to accommodate others, benefiting a mafia. The former Speaker Ramesh Kumar (Congress) wanted to know who were behind the mafia and who kept the law in abeyance.
More seats
Dr. Patil said though the Executive Council of the Medical Council of India had reduced the number of medical seats in the State by 250, it later accorded permission for admissions to 150 seats. He said permission was likely to be given for admissions to 100 more seats soon. He said the seat matrix for ayurveda and unani courses had not been announced by the Central Council of Indian Medicine.
About the eight deemed universities that have refused to give 25 per cent of their seats to the government, he said though the government refused to issue no-objection certificates to them, the University Grants Commission had sanctioned the NOC. The BJP members walked out of the House protesting “unsatisfactory” reply to their allegations.
(The Hindu)
