Rasheed Kappan for The Hindu

• Cites increase in salary of government college staff as reason 
• Private managements will be forced to increase salary
• `To meet the cost, fee should be increased by Rs. 75,000'

Bangalore, Jun 1: The State Government's recent salary increase for its employees could jeopardise its consensual fee structure agreement with the private professional college managements.

To retain their staff, private medical colleges now want to effect a similar pay increase and to make up for the additional cost, the Consortium of Medical, Engineering and Dental Colleges of Karnataka (COMED-K) has come up with a "Rs. 75,000 formula."

COMED-K wants the Government to increase the fee for CET quota MBBS students in private medical colleges by Rs. 75,000.

This should be in addition to the Rs. 35,000 (plus university fee) fixed for the 40 per cent government (CET) quota under the consensus reached in February. The 60 per cent management quota students were required to pay Rs. 3.25 lakh a year under the agreement.

COMED-K has estimated that its member colleges will have to spend about Rs. 4 crore to increase their staff salaries. "The Government has precipitated this financial crisis. We wrote to the Medical Education Ministry about our formula. There is no response yet," COMEDK executive secretary S. Kumar said.

But when contacted by this newspaper, Medical Education Minister V.S. Acharya ruled out any such increase. The consensus agreement had been ratified in the courts and undergraduate admission process was already on, based on it. "There is no question of a fee increase now," he said.

NRI quota

Another threat to the fee structure agreement was the Government's proposal to introduce 15 per cent NRI quota in its colleges from next year to compensate for the salary increase. COMED-K has threatened to fill all seats in its member colleges by itself next year, if the Government opted to raise funds through NRI students.

Mr. Acharya said the NRI quota might not be introduced this year. But next year, the Government proposed to set aside 15 per cent seats in four government colleges, three of which had an intake of 100 each and the Bangalore Medical College with an intake of 150. "Seventy-two seats out of these 450 can be allotted for NRIs. The money thus raised can compensate for the salary raise," the Minister said.

The Cabinet Sub-Committee on Higher Education was expected to meet next week to finalise the modalities. The fee structure for the Government NRI quota was likely to be part of the agenda.

But the private colleges were not impressed. "If government colleges, established from public funds can have seats for NRIs, they don't need our seats.

"Next year, we will allot all seats in our colleges ourselves, 85 per cent through COMEDK and 15 per cent for NRIs. We can even have a uniform fee of about Rs. 2.5 lakh for 85 per cent seats, lower than this year's Rs. 3.25 lakh," said Dr. Kumar. If COMEDK sticks to this formula, the consensus agreement could be history.