After their plea to get the fees of the Government medical colleges of Dehradun and Haldwani reduced was ignored, agitated parents of the MBBS students of these colleges have refused to submit the annual fees of their wards. It is learnt that more than 95 percent of the students have not submitted their fees. The last date to submit the fee for the second semester in the government medical colleges was July 31. In GDMC not even a single student has paid the fees. The parents are also planning to move to the court on the subject.
Earlier the parents of these students had requested the state government to reduce the fee of MBBS course. The parents had also written letters to the chief minister Trivendra Singh Rawat and leader of opposition in the state assembly on the issue.
The annual fee in the GDMC, Dehradun and Government Medical College, Haldwani is Rs 4.20 lakh. This fees is said to be the highest charged by any government medical college in the country. A campaign on social media has also been unleashed by the students and their relatives in which they are expressing their anguish over the high fees in these colleges. They are also expressing solidarity with one another in carrying forward their agitation.
The registrar of the HNB Uttarakhand Medical education university, Vijay Juyal said that the order on the fee of the colleges is old one. The only difference is that earlier the first year MBBS students were asked to sign a bond to work for a certain period of time in the government hospitals after completion of their studies. In lieu of this bond the students were required to pay a sum of only Rs 50000 per year as fee while the non bond students were charged a fee of Rs 4 lakh per annum. In the year 2019, the students taking admission in government medical colleges of Dehradun and Haldwani were not offered bond and all the students were asked to deposit the fee which was in excess of Rs 4 lakh per annum. However the parents are consistent in their demand that the Uttarakhand government should intervene and make the fees of these colleges at par with other colleges.
“In almost all government medical colleges of the country the fee for MBBS ranges from Rs 4000 to Rs 70000 per year. It is unjustified for the Uttarakhand government to charge the highest fees in the country. Most of the parents are from the middle and low income group categories and many have lost their jobs during the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic,’’ said mother of a MBBS student.
