The Allahabad High Court (HC) in Uttar Pradesh has set aside the order of an Appellate Authority under the UP Private Professional Educational Institutions (Regulation of Admission and Fixation of Fee) Act, that allowed Krishna Mohan (KM) Medical College, a private medical college in Mathura, to levy exorbitant fees on students.

The judgement, issued by a single-judge bench of Justice Saral Srivastava today, February 20, called the order "unsustainable" and an "abuse of process of law."

The court observed that students were forced to pay significantly higher fees than what the college itself had sought in its appeal to the UP Private Professional Educational Institutions Act.

"From the aforesaid fact, it is evident that the students have paid more fee than what has been claimed by the respondent College in the appeal, and for this reason also, the impugned order does not sustain," the court ruled.

Criticising the college's legal actions, the court noted that it had filed multiple writ petitions for the same relief without disclosing them before the Appellate Authority.

"The filing of two writ petitions for the same cause of action with identical prayer without disclosing the same before the Appellate Authority, in the opinion of the Court, is an act of gross negligence on the part of the College and an abuse of process of law," the judgment stated.

The bench further rejected the college’s claim that students had voluntarily given undertakings to pay increased fees.

It ruled, "The undertaking given by the students, in the opinion of the Court, is not given out of their free will but under a fear of losing admission in the MBBS course," the court observed.

With this verdict, the college is now restrained from imposing any fee hike on students beyond the government-fixed rate.

The matter pertained to a petition filed by the MBBS students of the KM Medical College from the 2019 batch, who alleged that the college administration had hiked their fees from Rs 8.5 lakh per annum to Rs 11.5 per annum when they asked the college to issue their stipends of Rs 12,000 per month for their internships.

The students alleged in their petition that this increment is beyond the fees at the time of their counselling after they cleared the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test Undergraduate (NEET-UG) in 2019.

The case was disposed off in the Court on January 24.