Karnataka: No lessons learnt yet from medical seat-blocking scam

BENGALURU: A month after the income-tax department unearthed the multi-crore medical seat-blocking scam, the state government has not made any attempt to plug loopholes in the admission process.
Around 60 complaints related to admission discrepancies and collection of higher fees have remain unaddressed. The government has virtually rendered regulatory bodies ineffective by dragging its feet in filling vacancies in the Karnataka Fee Regulatory Committee (KFRC) and Admission Overseeing Committee (AOC).
While the position of the KFRC chairman has been vacant since December last year, the government is yet to find a replacement for the two AOC members, who retired in July.
“We’ve been receiving widespread complaints from students, but we couldn’t take them up since the committee cannot sit without quorum,” said AOC chairman Justice B Manohar. He reminded the government and sought nomination of members in July but there has been no response.
It’s the same in KFRC. “We haven’t been able to hear their complaints since the committee is headless,” said MG Prabhakar, member of KFRC. HN Basavaraju, another member, said committee members have written multiple times to the higher education department, requesting it to appoint a chairman, but in vain.
While most complaints received by AOC are about allotment of seats and fees collected in private medical colleges, they also get complaints about other professional courses, including engineering and nursing.
What dismayed members of both committees is that they haven’t even received remuneration since January this year. Till December last year, members of both committees received Rs 25,000 per month and the government in January 2019 revised the pay structure and since thenm they havven’t met even once.
Seat-blocking scam
The income-tax department officials on October 10 and 11 searched three medical colleges run by Congress leaders G Parameshwara and RL Jalappa and uncovered the seat-blocking scam. As many as 150 candidates of 185 aspirants selected under National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test had blocked seats in the three colleges and surrendered them to college managements which in turn sold them for a high price.
‘Immediate steps’
The seat-surrendering scam is a bigger issue which we’ll address separately. We’ll take immediate steps to appoint a chairman to fee regulatory committee and members to admission overseeing committee.
CN Ashwath Narayan | Dy chief minister who holds higher education portfolio