After the Uttarakhand state government removed the condition of ‘Bond’ for a subsidized fee which was amounted to Rs 50,000 per year, the fee reached almost Rs 20 lakh. As a result, students are facing the burden of paying unaffordable fees. 

Deepak Singh Bisht, a first-year MBBS student in government medical college in Haldwani may not be able to pursue his studies further as his mother grapples hard to collect Rs 4.11 lakh for her fee instalment for the second year.

A first year student of government medical college in Dehradun told, “In the year 2019, the provision of the bond was removed from Dr Suheela Tiwari Government Medical College, Haldwani and Government Doon Medical College, Dehradun. Now, the fee structure for MBBS crosses over Rs 20 lakh in both the government colleges making them highest fee for MBBS among government medical colleges in the country. Many of us are groping in dark about how to pay the installments of our fee.”

Demanding the resumption of a reasonable fee structure, students from both the state government colleges have written a letter to the Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat who also heads the medical education department. The letter mentioned that in the neighbouring states of Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and Punjab, the maximum amount of MBBS fees reaches Rs 1.2 lakh per year which amounts to Rs 6 lakh in five years.

The students also took to Twitter to oppose the fee structure with the hashtag #20lakhforMBBS. Earlier, undergraduate medical students of government medical colleges in Uttarakhand were made to sign a bond that stated that the condition of subsidised fee would be agreed if they serve at a government medical facility for 5-years of time after completing their course. 

Source: The New Indian Express

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