The State government on Wednesday assured a Division Bench of the Kerala High Court that no student admitted to the MBBS course in medical colleges in the State will be denied admission on the grounds of non-submission of bank guarantee.
The government made the submission when a writ petition filed by Leader of the Opposition Ramesh Chennithala seeking a directive to the government for steps to facilitate deserving students from the economically weaker sections to obtain bank guarantee of ₹6 lakh, the balance of the annual fee, within the time limit prescribed by the Supreme Court came up for hearing.
He said meritorious students would be unable to pursue the course due to their inability to furnish the bank guarantee.
Fee for NRI seats
The Advocate General also submitted that the increase of ₹5 lakh effected in the fee for NRI seats would be kept as corpus for providing scholarship to below the poverty line candidates. The government was also contemplating to extend the scholarship to other deserving candidates as well. While the fee for NRI candidates provisionally fixed for last year was ₹15 lakh a seat, the fee fixed per student for this year is ₹20 lakh.
Disposing of the petition, the Bench observed that the government was aware of the situation and effective steps had been taken to tackle the issue. Therefore, there was no need to issue further orders on the petition.