13 colleges fined Rs 20 lakh for each bogus admission

Maharashtra’s Pravesh Niyantran Samiti, a quasi-judicial body, has found that 13 reputed medical institutions have not followed the proper procedure while giving admissions to students and has fined them Rs 20 lakh for each student. Most of the institutions are run by senior politicians of the state.

Moreover, the Samiti has asked the government to withhold their affiliation for the coming academic year in case they failed to pay the penalty amount within four weeks.

In its order passed on October 15, the Samiti has held that these colleges were found guilty of not following ‘fair, transparent and merit based process for admissions’ and hence has imposed penalty of Rs 20 lakh on colleges for every student adopting the wrong way for gaining admission during the year 2012-2013.

This is for the first time that professional educational institutions have been fined for any wrongdoing.

According to the findings, in the year 2012-13 some 13 colleges from across the state had wrongly admitted a total of 206 students in their medical colleges without following proper norms. The findings of the Samiti are in the possession of this newspaper.

Interestingly, senior politicians are running many of these institutions. For instance, Yogita Dental College and Hospital in Khed, Ratnagiri district is being run by the Shivtej Arogya Seva Sanstha that belongs to environment minister and senior Shiv Sena leader Ramdas Kadam. Mr Kadam is the president of this organisation. Two other colleges — Terna Medical College and Hospital in Nerul and Terna Dental College and Hospital in Navi Mumbai that are also being fined for wrong admission are run by Terna Public Charitable Trust. Senior NCP leader and former MP Padamsinh Patil is the chairman of Terna trust. Similarly, the NKP Salve Institute of Medical Sciences and Research Centre, Nagpur is also in the list of penalised institutions. Former Maharashtra Congress president Ranjeet Deshmukh is the head of the institution.

The Samiti has even asked the state government to withhold affiliation of these institutions for the academic year 2016-17 if they don’t pay up the fine. “It means the educational institutions will not be able to take admissions in the coming year. The objective behind this is to ensure that institutions pay the fine in the stipulated time,” said a senior official from the medical education department.

It is pertinent to know that the students who were eligible, but denied admission in the such medical colleges had filed a petition in the Supreme Court which upheld the students’ contention and has asked the Maharashtra government to pay ‘public law damages’ to the students. Following the court orders, the Samiti decided to penalise the institutions.