Court asks college to refund penalty
The Medak District Consumer Forum has taken note of a college charging a student `2 lakh apart from cancellation fee of `1 lakh paid to the university in order to return the student's certificates.
The case was of an Eamcet aspirant who was allotted a BDS seat in September 2014 at the MNR Dental College, which is affiliated to Dr NTR University of Health Sciences. She took the seat. After a month, the student was alloted a seat in BSc Agriculture, which the student accepted. The student approached the NTR University for her documents. The university had notified earlier that whoever withdraws admission after the second counselling should pay a cancellation amount of `1 lakh. The student paid the cancellation charges but the university directed her to the MNR Dental College to get the original allotment order, based on which the cancellation process could be completed. The college demanded `2 lakh to return the allotment order and no objection certificate, stating that they were charging this amount as the seat would remain vacant for the rest of the course since the allotment process had closed.
In desperation, the student paid the money and got back her certificates as she wanted to join the BSc course. She then approached the Andhra Pradesh Information Commission which penalised the university `25,000 for not attending to the problem.
The university stated that it had issued a notification that cancellation post September would be charged `1 lakh and accused the college of willfully denying the original certificates. The college stated that they had charged the cancellation fee as the seat would remain vacant.
Following this, the forum stated that there was nothing wrong in a student blocking a BDS seat as that admission notification was released before that of the BSc agriculture course. It was natural to reserve a seat and the student couldn’t be held responsible for this.
It stated that the student had paid the cancellation fee of `1 lakh to the university, and so it was unfair of the college to demand another `2 lakh.
The college was asked to refund `2 lakh at an interest of 9 per cent per annum from the date of complaint and pay a compensation of `50,000 for negligence and shabby treatment of the student.