by Moiz Mannan
It is quite amazing how politics surreptitiously creeps into any and every important aspect of life in India. Take the burning issue of admissions to NRI quota seats in professional courses.
In view of the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections, no state government is willing to allow educational institutions under it to increase fees. A fee hike is one of the most unpopular actions in India and no state government, whatever its political affiliation, would take the risk of incurring the wrath of a people already crushed by high inflation.
At the same time, a large proportion of the private institutions offering professional courses across the country are owned by trusts and societies run by political leaders. These institutions have been getting increasingly pushy with state governments about permission to raise fees.
Of the several options, the state governments had, they appear to have taken the easiest course – passing on the burden to the ‘fat cats’ called non-resident Indians (NRIs). In case where there aren’t enough of those, the authorities are looking the other way as private colleges blatantly misuse the NRI quota to admit resident students who have the ability to pay.
Take the recent case of the son of a senior official in the Karnataka government. The boy was placed first in an entrance test conducted for its postgraduate course by a medical college. The college authorities maintain that students under the NRI quota need not qualify through NEET (National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test) and only need to fulfil the basic eligibility criteria.
For admissions to postgraduate medical courses, the college is reported to have conducted its own entrance examination and admitted students, including the top bureaucrat’s son, under the NRI quota “on the basis of merit.” Now, what’s interesting is that, according to college authorities, the NEET qualification applies to students applying for the management (self-financing) quota seats.
In Punjab, the state government recently announced its intention to conduct special medical entrance tests for NRI candidates for admission to Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) or Bachelor in Dental Surgery (BDS) courses.
According to a report in The Hindustan Times, the state government has come up with a special offer for NRI candidates to fill up the stipulated NRI seats in both private and government medical colleges.
In this case, however, the government is undertaking the exercise to fill only those seats that have remained vacant after admitting NEET-qualified NRI students, even though the Supreme Court recently quashed the pan-India test. There are around 2,500 MBBS and BDS seats across Punjab and each college has 15 percent seats reserved for NRI candidates. In the past, vacant NRI seats were filled by converting them to general category seats or through management quota.
In an earlier notification, issued on June 5, the Punjab government declared that only candidates who have qualified the NEET-2013, would be eligible to apply for all seats, including NRI quota seats. That notification had disqualified hundreds of aspirants for NRI seats, who did not appear for NEET.
Reports from Hyderabad speak of large-scale irregularities in NRI quota seats. A Times of India reporter, posing as an NRI aspirant, got quotes from an alleged admission broker who reportedly offered an NRI seat in a rural-based medical college for Rs4m. That was apart from Rs 550,000 as fees for the course.
Andhra Pradesh had recently come out with a government order specifying that only students whose biological parents or legal guardians were NRIs may be admitted to seats under this quota. Yet, according to reports, seats in the 15 percent NRI quota set apart this year are being touted after colleges sold out their ‘management quotas’ for sums ranging between Rs5m and Rs10m.
If a candidate is willing to pay, the hand-in-glove college managements and brokers manage to find him or her an authentic NRI guardian who too probably gets a cut from the loot.
The Andhra government had introduced the “NRI-sponsored” clause for engineering colleges during 2008-09 allegedly under pressure from college managements. However, the clause was removed last year following complaints of colleges selling seats to locals by collecting donations.
But for medical colleges it had decided to allow NRI-sponsored students, allowing private colleges to admit locals by creating fake NRI sponsorship certificates.
There are allegations that the managements had struck a deal with the government. In return for creation of the NRI-sponsored quota, they would agree to the old fee structure, the Asian Age recently reported. While the fee was due to be increased this year, the government was not keen on it as it is an election year.
Meanwhile, in Kerala, beleaguered Cochin Medical College (CMC) has decided to hold an entrance test of its own to identify eligible candidates to be admitted to NRI quota seats for the MBBS course. The CMC offers 100 seats for its MBBS course. Of these, 15 seats come under the NRI quota and 35 under the self-financing quota.
Objections have been raised against the CMC bypassing the NEET. It has been also alleged that the proposed takeover of the college by the government is being delayed to facilitate corruption in the MBBS admissions.
