AAP Punjab unit chief Bhagwant Mann on Sunday pitched for fixing the fees for medical colleges in the state and asked the central and state governments to consider the reasons for Indian students to go abroad for higher studies. He said that if thousands of Punjabi, Haryanvi and other Indian students are stranded in war-torn Ukraine, the BJP-led central and state governments of Punjab and Haryana are responsible for their trauma.
He said that the government never paid heed to the compulsion of Indian students to go to countries like Ukraine, Russia, China, Philippines and Tajikistan for medical studies and higher education. Mann also appealed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to come up with a concrete plan to open government medical colleges on a large scale across the country and stop private institutions from charging unreasonable fees.
He further said that the aspiring students are from general and middle class families who fail to get admission in limited seats of medical colleges in the country. He said that he does not even have the financial means to pay the hefty fees of private colleges. He said that after independence no new medical colleges were established at the district level in Punjab and there was a marginal increase in the number of seats in government colleges of Patiala, Amritsar and Faridkot.
The AAP’s chief ministerial candidate, who recently appealed to the central government to make arrangements for the safe return of Indian students from Ukraine, said there are only 675 MBBS seats, including the Dr BR Ambedkar State Institute of Medical Sciences in Mohali. There are 100 seats in Sciences. He said that this figure is much less than the number of seats available in Haryana and Himachal Pradesh. Although there are about 770 MBBS seats in half a dozen private medical colleges in Punjab, where students are being charged a minimum fee of Rs 50 lakh to Rs 80 lakh for a medical degree. Poor and middle class students with good ranks cannot afford these seats, while people from wealthy families get these seats at an average rank too,” Mann said in a statement here.
He said that health and education is the priority of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). He said that if AAP forms the government in Punjab, then major steps will be taken to reform government medical colleges, universities and schools and to regulate the fees of private educational institutions so that the students of the state are not forced to study abroad. He asked that if countries like Ukraine can offer 6 years MBBS degree at a fee of Rs 20 lakh to Rs 25 lakh, then why can’t India offer such. The state went to polls on February 20 and the results will be out on March 10.
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