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The Fee Regulatory Committee of Gujarat has penalised 29 institutes for charging extra fee from students. It has also asked 9 institutes to retuned the excess fee that they have charged from their students.
According to a report released by the HRD Ministry 3 years ago, about 1.5 million engineers join the workforce every year. Imagine the demand for technical education in India and the volume of students who enrol in technical institutes every year! Because of the high demand in technical education, technical institutes, more often than not, take these students for a ride when it comes to fees. Charging abominably in the name of providing quality education, a major component of the fee is non-refundable and much above the permissible limit. One such case was reported in Gujarat where the Fee Regulatory Committee (Technical) penalised about 29 technical institutes on July 31, 2019 for charging excess fees from students. Orders were given by the Fee Regulatory Committee (Technical) to penalise these institutes with a fine that ranged from Rs. 1.55 lakhs to Rs. 20 lakhs because they charged extra money than the actual fee from their students.
Nine institutes have also returned a total amount of Rs. 1.19 crores to 2,074 students from whom they had deposited the money in the form of caution fee or a deposit. Two of these nine institutes are run by Shankersinh Vaghela, the former Chief Minister of Gujarat. 876 students got admission in Shankersinh Vaghela Bapu Institute of Technology, that is located in Gandhinagar, and 241 students were enrolled in Shankersinh Vaghela Bapu Institute Technical Campus, also in Gandhinagar.
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The former institute returned a sum of Rs. 43.80 lakhs and the latter returned Rs. 12.05 lakhs that they had taken for their diploma engineering and degree engineering courses. Six of the other colleges that have returned the extra fee come under A-One Pharmacy College Enasan, Ahmedabad, located in the district of Ahmedabad, and another set of six colleges comes under the group of Veerayatan Institutes in Kutch.
Earlier in 2019, the committee had ordered a total sum of Rs. 1.05 crores to be returned to 1,613 students. A member of the Fee Regulatory Committee (Technical), Kamlesh Joshipura, said that the FRC has acted on two parts which have proved to be successful. It returned the money to all students and imposed a fine on the institutes that were violating the orders of the committee. He said that when the matter was brought to the notice of the FRC, repeated orders, notices, and directions were issued to these institutes and eventually they were penalised after a personal hearing.
Kamlesh Joshipura also said that the institutes which have not submitted the undertaking or declaration but have applied for a personal hearing shall get to know the decision about them after the hearing.
