CALCUTTA, 2 October 2004 — The West Bengal government suffered a major setback yesterday when the Calcutta High Court branded a capitation fee scheme for admission of NRI students in state-run medical colleges as downright illegal.
The judicial blow rendered Health Minister Surya Kanta Mishra speechless and Chittaranjan Maity, director of medical education, squirmed in embarrassment when journalists sought their reaction yesterday.
The two came out with a scheme last year — without the approval of the Left Front government — to charge NRI students nearly one million rupees for a seat in Calcutta’s S. S. K. M. Medical College and Hospital and the Midnapore Medical College and Hospital, citing a Supreme Court directive.
The brazen cash-for-medical seats scheme was duly notified by the state government on July 19, 2003. And out of 1,300 applicants, 105 students were selected under the NRI quota. They paid 924,000 rupees each to become a doctor — one of the most lucrative and respectable professions in India.
But the plan ran into rough weather when a group of 16 boys and girls — who cleared the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) but were denied admission to medical colleges — filed a petition in the high court against NRI quota.
Yesterday, Justice Indira Banerjee scrapped the NRI quota, branding the 2003 notification “illegal, arbitrary, bad in law and ultra vires of the constitution” and revoked the admission of 105 NRI candidates.
Justice Banerjee also ordered the two medical colleges to admit a new set of students from the merit list of the 2003 JEE results which included the petitioners.
Even at the height of controversy, the state government justified it on the grounds that medical courses had to subsidized as it was becoming increasingly impossible to finance them. But there was great opposition to the seats-for-cash plan by parents of meritorious students who argued that medical education was being made the preserve of the wealthy.
