A Division Bench of the AP High Court comprising Justice Goda Raghu Ram and Justice P. Durga Prasad quashed the notifications issued by the State government in August 2010 pertaining to the fee to be paid by students in private engineering colleges.
The Bench said that there shall be uniform fee for all the students in a college except for the NRI quota. The judgment covers unaided colleges offering engineering, MBA, MCA, and Pharmacy courses.
They said that by fixing separate fee for A and B categories, one set of students were forced to subsidise the other, which was constitutionally impermissible.
At present, the fee for A category seats in private engineering college is Rs.30,000 and nearly Rs.90,000 for B category. This, the Bench said, amounted to cross subsidy and was unconstitutional. The Bench permitted the AFRC to recommend and the State government to notify a higher fee for students admitted into 15 per cent quota for NRIs. This fee shall be deposited in a separate bank account to be employed for the benefit of students from economically weaker sections.
The government is to notify the fee structure in March of the preceding academic year. The court directed the State to notify the fee structure proposals for academic years 2010-2011, 2011-2012 & 2012-2013 within three months.