Taking serious note of the sale of medical and engineering seats in unaided private colleges, the Mumbai High Court today put on hold admission processes in these colleges, including fee collection, until further court orders and came down heavily on their managements. Expressing concern and displeasure over the sale of medical and engineering seats in some private colleges — it was first reported by The Indian Express — a division bench of Justice A P Shah and Justice D Y Chandrachud stayed the admission processes of these colleges. The court, hearing petitions filed by 11 private medical and engineering colleges against regulation of their fees by the state, granted requests by Advocate General Goolam Vahanvati to club the petitions together and give the state government time to file its affidavits. The next hearing will be on July 8. The judges said that private unaided colleges couldn’t do whatever they pleased, and that there should be ‘‘some kind of regulatory authority’’ in place to oversee their functioning. A Supreme Court judgement in December freed private colleges from government fee control, but though it warned them against ‘‘profiteering’’, colleges have selectively interpreted the judgement to charge whatever they wish. Indeed, at the High Court on Thursday, the colleges argued that the judgement given by the apex court’s constitutional bench in the October 2002 case of the T M A Pai Foundation gave unaided private colleges the right to admit students of their choice and form their own fee structures. The petitioners have challenged the constitution of the state-constituted Educational Institutions Regulatory Authority (EIRA) and Medical Education Regulatory Authority(MERA). According to two recent state government’s government resolutions, private unaided engineering colleges must admit students through common entrace tests, something that the colleges do not want to do. The High Court judgement is vital to the entire admission imbroglio because the new regulatory authorities and the colleges are already on a collision course. The EIRA is supposed to clear fee proposals submitted by colleges. Most colleges have submitted proposals to the EIRA asking that they be allowed to charge annual fees in the range of Rs 45,000-Rs 50,000. But on Wednesday — in an interim arrangement — the EIRA announced fee structures pegged at ‘‘not more than Rs 37,000 for the time being’’ for students who qualify on merit.
