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Kerala High Court bench of Justice A K Jayasankaran Nambiar and Mohammed Nias C P has restrained private medical colleges in the state from collecting fees for any academic year other than the one which was being taught.

The Court has held that collecting annual fees from students for the next year in advance when the previous year’s studies have not been completed by an institution would amount to “profiteering”.

The Court was hearing a bunch of petitions by students who were admitted to the 2019-2020 batch of the MBBS Course offered by various private medical colleges in the State. Due to the pandemic the instructions relevant to an academic year could not be completed within the period allotted for the same and spilled over to subsequent months in a calendar year. This resulted in a situation where the students, while pursuing the second year of their course in the educational institutions, were issued with demand notices for the fee in respect of the third year of the course. The present petitions have been filed to challenged those demand notices.

The petitioners contend that by demanding fees in respect of a year different from that for which instructions are imparted, the educational institutions concerned are effectively collecting the determined fees in advance and this is not permissible.

The Court relied on the decision in Islamic Academy wherein it was held that institutions shall charge fee only for one year in accordance with the rules and shall not charge the fees for the entire course. It is also observed that if for some reason, fees have already been collected for a longer period, the amount so collected shall be kept in a fixed deposit in a nationalized bank against which no loan or advance may be granted so that the interest accrued thereupon may enure to the benefit of the students concerned .

Further, Section 8 (3) of the 2017 Kerala Medical Education Act which mandates fee that can be collected by the private medical educational institutions from the students in the year in which they are admitted to the institution concerned and the institutions are prohibited from collecting any amount in excess of the annual fee so determined, in an academic year. The yearly fee that is determined cannot also be revised by the educational institution concerned till the student completes his/her course in the institution. 

The Court further observed that by charging fees in advance, educational institutions would be resorting to 'profiteering', taking advantage of an unwarranted situation which is the pandemic. 

"We feel it would be unconscionable on the part of the private medical educational institutions concerned to demand the determined fees, unmindful of the difficulties faced by the students," the Court observed. 

The Court therefore allowed the writ petitions and directed the private medical institutions to refrain from demanding or collecting academic fees from them in respect of any academic year other than the one for which instructions are currently being imparted. 

However, the Court made it clear that the judgement only pertains to the situation concocted by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Case Title: Sanju Simon & Ors v. State of Kerala & Ors.