Puducherry State Parents and Students Welfare Association has urged the Government of the Union Territory (UT) to implead in the batch of writ petitions filed in the Madras High Court challenging the office memorandum issued by the National Medical Commission (NMC) on February 3, this year.

The memorandum insisted that the fee for 50% of seats in private medical colleges and deemed-to-be universities must be on par with the fee in government medical colleges in the respective State or UT, as stated in a report by The New Indian Express.

However, this is seeing opposition from three private medical colleges and four deemed-to-be universities in Puducherry as they shared difficulty in accepting this highly subsidised fee of the lone government medical college, and later on, held discussions with the fee fixation committee in the UT in this regard. The writ petitions were filed in this context.

Meanwhile, V Balasubramanian, President of the association, petitioned the Lt Governor requesting the government to implead in the case in the interest of students when Chief Justice Munishwar Nath Bhandari and Justice N Mala take up the batch of writ petitions for hearing on August 8.

What does the memorandum put out by NMC say?
As per the NMC memorandum, the benefit of this fee structure will, first and foremost, be made available to those candidates who have availed the government quota seats.

However, if such seats are less than 50% of the total seats of the respective institution, the remaining candidates could avail the benefit on merit.

Currently, the UT government's Centralised Admission Committee (CENTAC) fills less than 50% of the seats in the three private medical colleges, and no seat in the four deemed-to-be universities.