Thiruvananthapuram: The future of MBBS students from BPL category and backward communities studying in self-financing colleges in Kerala hangs in the balance. The scholarship for medical students from BPL categories hasn’t been released for three years. The government has also failed to hand over fees of students belonging to scheduled caste, scheduled tribe, and OEC categories to self-financing colleges. Due to the pending fees, self-financing college managements have decided not to admit students from backward communities in the current academic year.

Students belonging to the BPL category need to pay only 10 per cent of their total fees and the rest is borne by the government. However, the state government has not sanctioned funds in this regard since the 2020-21 academic year. And students are facing the brunt of college officials. Even though they are allowed to attend classes, they are not given attendance. It should be noted that the prescribed percentage of attendance is mandatory for attending main exams.

The government collects high fees from NRI students in order to pay the scholarships for BPL students. From every NRI student's annual fee of Rs 20 lakhs, Rs 5 lakhs is saved as corpus. The college management argue that the fees collected from NRI students shall be transferred totally into their accounts. A few have raised concerns about using NRI students' fees for paying scholarships for BPL students in the court. This is cited as a reason for delay in paying the amount to the colleges.

The entire fees of students belonging to BPL category and backward communities including their tuition and special fees are paid by the SC and ST development department. It is known that the government has to pay Rs 10-15 crores to several self-financing colleges in this regard.