MBBS fee hike: AAP to gherao education minister’s house

All the safety protocols laid out by the government will be strictly adhered to during the protest, the party leaders said

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Monday said the Punjab government had ‘debarred’ students from humble backgrounds from becoming doctors by effecting a huge fee hike in government medical colleges of the state.

HT Image

Addressing a press conference here, AAP MLA Meet Hayer, state general secretary Dinesh Chadha and state youth wing president Manjinder Singh Sidhu announced that the party’s youth wing will lay siege to medical education minister OP Soni’s residence in Amritsar on Wednesday to support the deserving students. “All the safety protocols laid out by the government will be strictly adhered to during the protest,” they said.

Meet Hayer said in 2010, the fee for MBBS degree in the government-run colleges in the state was ₹13,000 per annum which has been increased 12 times within 10 years, forcing aspirants to cough up ₹1.56 lakh per annum now, whereas doctors’ salaries and stipends have been raised only marginally in all these years.

Dismissing the state government’s take that colleges could not function without raising fees and the aim was also to provide better facilities to doctors in medical colleges, Hayer asked if the neighbouring states of Himachal Pradesh, Haryana and Rajasthan and Delhi are running medical colleges by charging nominal fees, why Punjab can’t replicate the model.