Kerala HC: “Private medical colleges are taking advantage of the global pandemic” (Read Judgement)

 

Recently the High Court of Kerala allowed the writ petitions of students studying in a private medical college in Kerala against the extra fees being charged to them.

FACTS:

The Private medical colleges demanded fees from the petitioners/students for a year different from the one they were studying in ignoring the delay in their academics due to the pandemic. The fee that can be collected by the said medical colleges, from the students admitted thereto, has been fixed by the Admission and Fee Regulatory Committee constituted in the State of Kerala in terms of the Kerala Medical Education (Regulation and Control of Admission to Private Medical Educational Institutions) Act, 2017. According to this Act, the medical colleges are forbidden from collecting any extra fees other than the one to be deposited for the academic year. The fees can also not be altered until the student completes the course.

HIGH COURT’S OBSERVATIONS:

The High Court said, “The immediate provocation for the writ petitions appears to be the intervention of the pandemic situation in our country, as a result of which, there was a break occasioned in the imparting of instructions to the students in the medical educational institutions concerned.”

The High Court said that due to the break in the lockdown, the longevity of the course had to be increased and interfered with the normal academic calendar. Using this to their advantage for profit gaining purposes, the college issued fee notices for the subsequent year when the petitioners were still completing their second year. The court condemned the same.

“By demanding fees in respect of a year different from that for which instructions are imparted, the educational institutions concerned are effectively collecting the determined fees in advance and this is not permissible going by the dictum in Islamic Academy of Education and Another v. State of Karnataka and Others – [(2003) 6 SCC 697], and the provisions of Section 8(3) of the 2017 Act.”

The court referred to the judgement of the Islamic Academy saying that not only is the fees to be collected of the current year only, in case fees has been already collected for a longer period, it is to be kept in a fixed deposit in a nationalised bank for the future benefits of the students.

The HC also mentioned that by collecting excess fees from the students the institution is being unjust and insensitive to the current hardships.

 “The educational institutions would then be resorting to ‘profiteering’ which term is defined in the Blacks Law Dictionary (5th Edn.) as the making of profit by taking advantage of an unusual or exceptional circumstance. The Covid pandemic without doubt brought about an unusual or exceptional situation fraught with financial implications.”

Conclusively the court allowed the writ petitions refraining the medical colleges in which the petitioners are studying from demanding fees for any year other than the present one – “based on the Regulations on Graduate Medical Education, 1997 during such periods when there occurs a disruption to the continuity of the MBBS course offered by the Institution concerned.”

Bench: Justice A.K. Jayasankaran Nambiar and Justice Mohammed Nias C.P.
Case title: Sanju Simon v. State of Kerala
Case details: WP(C) 16701/ 2021
Dated: 07/01/2022 

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(With input from news agency language)

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