The Supreme Court on Wednesday refused to hear a petition filed by a student seeking reduction in the exorbitant fees charged by a private medical college despite him getting admission under the EWS category.
“One cannot say that fees in a private college should be at par with government colleges… We need doctors in the country. If you are unable to pay, get a scholarship or any support programme,” Justices BV Nagaratna and Joymala Bagchi said.
The court heard a petition filed by Harshvardhan Singh, a valid Economic Weaker Section (EWS) certificate holder with an annual family income of less than $8 lakh, who appeared in the National Eligibility Test for Admission (Undergraduate) 2025 and secured 84.46 per cent. He stated that although there were vacancies in the early warning service, the Guidance Council allocated him a seat in the general category in one of the private medical colleges, for which the tuition fees are $18.9 lakh. However, the Rajasthan High Court rejected his request for reduced fees or an equivalent amount for the government medical college on May 5 – a decision that is under challenge in the Supreme Court.
The court said: “There is a fundamental difference between a government college and a private college. The latter are self-financing institutions while government colleges are funded by the state.” Referring to its ruling in the TMA Pai case (2002) which prohibited private colleges from charging per capita fees, the bench said: “Under the TMA Pai decision, per capita fees have been prohibited, but this does not mean that self-financing institutions cannot charge public college fees.”
Advocate Rishabh Sancheti, representing the petitioner, informed the bench that the National Medical Commission (NMC) had issued an office memorandum recommending that 50% of the seats in private medical colleges should be at par with the fees in government medical colleges. He stated that this was followed in other states like Maharashtra and West Bengal but not in Rajasthan. He further stated that the Supreme Court order stated that the NMC order is not mandatory but a recommendation.
Sancheti added, “Across Rajasthan, private medical colleges charge fees between $18 lakh for $25 thousand annually. It can’t be too high. This amounts to discrimination for two reasons. Candidates who scored lower than the petitioner were allotted seats under the EWS category and secondly, the petitioner, despite belonging to the EWS category, was treated at par with general category candidates for the purpose of payment of fees, which created an unsustainable financial barrier to medical education.
“Those who did so will pay. The Supreme Court has passed an order. We see no basis to interfere in the same,” the bench said.
The Supreme Court said that there is no violation of law in the fees charged by the private university as they have been approved by the Fees Regulatory Commission (FRC) of Rajasthan.
The petitioner was allotted a seat at IIMS, Udaipur in November 2025. Despite applying under the EWS category and availability of EWS seats in other colleges, he claimed that he was arbitrarily allotted a seat under the general unreserved boys category (URB).
He also alleged that when the NEET-UG 2025 vacancy round for MBBS, BDS and B.Sc Nursing seats was announced, the private college illegally converted the unfilled EWS seats into general category seats and arbitrarily allotted them to candidates who did not qualify in the examination.
