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| Admissions to medical and dental colleges in Maharashtra will commence from Monday based on a new fee structure that will fully subsidise education for students of scheduled castes (SCs), scheduled tribes (STs) and nomadic tribes.
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| The scheme, formulated by chief minister Sushilkumar Shinde, his deputy Chaggan Bhujbal, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar and minister for medical education Digvijay Khanvilkar, will put an annual cost of Rs 17 crore on the state exchequer.
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| Khanvilkar said on Saturday that, under the new formula, 50 per cent of the seats in the medical, dental, unani, homeopathy and ayurveda courses will be under the management quota with course fees ranging from Rs 3.15 lakh to Rs 3.90 lakh. These seats would be filled up on the basis of the common entrance test (CET) results announced earlier.
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| Of the remainder, 25 per cent will be open category seats, with ten seats reserved for economically backward students (where the annual family income does not exceed Rs 65,000). 25 per cent seats will be for reserved category students.
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| Within the reserved category, 18 per cent seats (for SC, ST and nomadic tribe students) would be fully subsidised by the state government. The remaining seven per cent reserved seats would receive partial subsidy from the government to the extent of Rs one lakh for medical, Rs 75,000 for dental, Rs 50,000 for ayurveda and Rs 20,000 for unani and homeopathy courses.
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| The state government has also requested the managements of private medical colleges to refrain from collecting fees from the reserved category students since it has committed to fund the same from its exchequer.
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| The state government will submit this newly formulated fee structure before the Supreme Court on October 6 for ratification, for the current academic year. It has also written to the chief justice of the Bombay High Court to appoint a retired judge to deliberate with the managements of private medical and dental colleges on a rational fee structure for these courses.
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The admission forms may be accessed from a newly created website
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