Over 656 UPSC, JEE, NEET, other coaching aspirants refunded more than Rs 1 crore: Govt

NEW DELHI: 656 coaching students who enrolled for UPSC CSE, IIT JEE, NEET, CA, CAT, and other entrance examinations have claimed a refund of more than Rs 1 crore from coaching institutes after raising grievances to official helpline, the Centre said on Sunday. According to the official data, a total of 16,276 coaching aspirants raised complaints regarding unfair practices on the National Consumer Helpline (NCH) in the last 12 months.

Among the complaints are non refund of enrolment fee, lack in teaching quality, abrupt course cancellations. The department of consumer affairs resolved the grievances through the portal to “ensure justice for students and aspirants”.

“Following numerous complaints registered in the National Consumer Helpline regarding unfair practices by various coaching centres especially not refunding the enrolment fees of the students/ aspirants, NCH initiated a drive to resolve these grievances on a mission-mode to facilitate a total refund of 1 cr to affected students from the total demanded refund of 2.39 Cr till date,” the union government said.

The coaching students reached out to the helpline after their requests were either rejected or not addressed by the coaching centres.

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Increase in complaints from coaching students

The data also revealed an increase in the number of complaints filed by the “dissatisfied” students. The total numbers of grievances registered by the coaching students were 4,815 in the year 2021-2022 followed by 5,351 in 2022-2023, and 16,276 in 2023-24.

“This increase reflects growing confidence and trust of students in NCH as an effective grievance redressal mechanism before opting to knock at the door of Consumer Commissions. In 2024, already 6980 students have reached out to NCH for speedy redressal of their grievances at a pre litigation stage,” the centre stated.

“Success stories” of centre

Taking pride in the success of the consumers department in helping the affected students, the centre shared success stories of students who were granted relief. One such story is of a coaching aspirant from Bengaluru who had taken a study loan of Rs 3.5 lakh for admission in a management course offered by an institution from Lucknow. He was allegedly forced to opt out of the course owing to unreasonable delays in its commencement. Even after multiple follow ups, he didn’t receive a refund.

“Distressed by loan EMIs and inability to enrol anywhere else due to paucity of funds, he approached NCH and was granted refund on department’s intervention.” Another student from Gujarat’s Bharuch was provided Rs 8.36 lakh for enrolment.

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Students and aspirants registered their grievances by calling toll-free “1915” helpline number or making complaints at the portal – consumerhelpline.gov.in. The department launched the National Consumer Helpline (NCH) to disseminate information on issues pertaining to consumers and promote consumer welfare. It extended this service with the launch of Integrated Consumer Grievance Redressal Mechanism (INGRAM) portal : a pre-litigation platform maintained and monitored by NCH for consumers to get their complaints and grievances addressed directly by the companies.

The centre further said that actions have been taken against the malpractices by the coaching centres including misleading advertisements and several coaching institutes have been penalized.