Maha Cabinet expected to clear reimbursement of medical & dental students

In a bid to keep the students of medical and dental courses from the general category affected because of the reservation under the Socially and Educational Backward Classes Act and Economically Backward Classes Act, the government has proposed to reimburse their fee for 2019-20. This is important when the Supreme Court convenes its next hearing on September 10 challenging Maratha quota.

The state cabinet at its meeting slated for Wednesday is expected to give approval for the same. The BJP-led government had approved the reimbursement of fee of all the open category MBBS merit students who were impacted because of SEBC and EBC reservations. The previous government had advised all such students to take admission in the private colleges.

The government had issued a notification on September 20, 2019. The total number of students impacted were more than 259. However, the BJP-led government had released the list of 106 students with ‘’only merit’’ criteria while no other criteria is applicable to get the reimbursement benefit. Students have already made representation to the state government as the first year was over and the colleges were demanding a second-year fee. Sudha Shenoy, a parent representative told Free Press Journal that the previous government issued notification and had promised to pay fees of general category students to 259 seats reduced in undergraduate and 100 odd seats in postgraduate. "However, the Department of Medical Education and Research (DMER) played a foul game by making only a partial list of 106 undergraduate and 6 postgraduate students in November 2019. This is again cheating of the general category students by making an incomplete list without fixing the clear criteria. We want present government to clear the pending reimbursements of the 106 students in the partial list and also instruct DMER to come up with the balance list of affected students to do justice to meritorious candidates,’’ she noted.