Maharashtra NEET UG Counselling: MBBS aspirant moves HC against medical college for ‘overcharging’

MUMBAI: A medical aspirant has moved the Bombay High Court (HC) alleging that a Maharashtra medical college denied him admission to MBBS after he refused to pay the excessive fee demanded by the institute.

Prasad Mashalkar, a student from Dharashiv (Osmanabad) district of the state, has claimed that he was allotted a seat in the institutional quota (IQ) – the same as management quota – at Terna Medical College at Navi Mumbai in the first stray vacancy round of the NEET UG counselling 2024.

However, when he visited the college with the prescribed fee amount for IQ seats, he was asked to pay a higher amount and was eventually denied admission.

Mashalkar took the issue up with the Common Entrance Test Cell (Mah CET Cell), the state authority responsible for conducting admissions to professional courses, as well as the Fee Regulating Authority (FRA) but to no avail. His petition will likely be heard by the court this week.

NEET Counselling 2024: College-level admissions

The complaint follows several such grievances about wrongful admission refusals by medical, dental and AYUSH colleges during this year's undergraduate (UG) admission process. In response to the allegations of financial misconduct in IQ or management quota admissions at 13 private medical and dental colleges, the state medical commissioner, a month ago, had initiated an inquiry.

The state Admission Regulating Authority (ARA) too had taken cognizance of around 25 complaints made during the regular admission rounds and had directed around a dozen institutes to enrol the aggrieved students.

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However, as reported by Careers360, more students were allegedly refused admissions during the second stray vacancy round of NEET counselling, which was conducted at the college-level thanks to an interim order by HC. These plaints, though, are yet to be resolved.

Medical college denies admission

In his plea, Mashalkar claimed that he was denied admission for various “extraneous reasons” even though his documents were verified and he was carrying bank demand drafts worth Rs 31.5 lakh, covering the IQ tuition fees, which is thrice the regular fees, hostel and mess charges and caution money.

"An institute representative first objected to me being accompanied by a local guardian, instead of my parents, despite no such requirement from the Maharashtra CET Cell. They, then, falsely claimed that I came through an agent. And finally, they asked me to pay five times the tuition fees in place of the maximum permitted three times," he told Careers360.

Belonging to a modest agrarian family, Mashalkar said that his family had sold its farm land to arrange for his medical education.

While Sunil Petkar, Dean of Terna Medical College, didn't respond to a call or a message from Careers360, the institute, at a hearing conducted by FRA's Grievance Committee last week, claimed that the student was denied admission as he was not ready to pay the fees.

However, in a note about the hearing, the authority recorded that since the candidate visited the college with requisite DDs, he had intention of being enrolled and concluded that the college “committed default/wrong by refusing admission to a candidate who was lawfully granted seat by Competent Authority”.

While the fee regulator said that the candidate deserved to participate in the upcoming special stray vacancy round, it decided to move the complaint to ARA to decide further course of action.

As the special stray vacancy round of undergraduate medical admissions is already underway, Mashalkar has sought HC's intervention. The petition requests the court to direct the college to keep one IQ seat vacant till the final verdict is reached and allow the candidate to provisionally attend MBBS classes as an interim relief.