AGARTALA:The administration has shifted the entrance venue for getting admission in Tripura Medical College (TMC) to MBB College of Agartala following protest from civil society and the Opposition Congress.
An official release here on Saturday said Sunday’s common entrance test for MBBS and BSc Nursing in TMC would be held at 1400 hrs and the authority had shifted the venue to ensure smooth conduct of the examination and impose section 144 in the area.
Finance Minister Badal Choudhury and Health Minister Tapan Chakraborty held a meeting with Congress leaders and civil society representatives last evening to resolve the issue of admission and administrative procedures of running the college.
Addressing media here, leader of Opposition Ratan Lal Nath revealed that the state government was doing business in the name of registered society and on the other, it had made affidavit to Medical Council of India (MCI) that it was running by the state government.”In the affidavit to MCI, Director Health Service affirmed that the state government was taking TMC from Global Education Network, paying salary from government exchequer ranging from Rs 1.10 lakh to Rs 12,000 per month and apart from that the state government had allocated budget in plan head for past three fiscal, which established the TMC as government college,” Mr Nath opined adding that according to the norms of government college, TMC had offered 15 per cent seat to central pool.
However, in the process of MBBS admission, the state government had been collecting three times more fees from the candidates of TMC than Agartala Government Medical College (AGMC), saying it was an autonomous institution.
In the distribution of seats, TMC offered only 55 out of 100 to Tripura domicile and 30 seats were kept open for other states’ students where allegedly the state government had been collecting huge amount of capitation fees besides, prescribing fees of Rs 3.85 lakh per semester.
The opposition, however, demanded to keep 85 seats reserved for Tripura students and get them admitted from joint entrance examination merit list besides, reduction of the tuition fees to Rs 1.85 lakh per semester and cancel the entrance test at this level.
”If the government forcefully wants to take test tomorrow without considering the demand we will not allow to conduct it for the interest of Tripura,” said Pradesh Congress president Surajit Datta, adding that the Health Minister and Health Director Dr Satyaranjan Debbarma should be sacked immediately for resorting to falsehood on the issue.
He was also angry with the ‘silence’ of the Chief Minister and claimed that he had not given the green signal to the concerned ministers present at the meeting today ‘to fulfil our genuine demands’.
He knows that as the source of funds in Kerala and West Bengal had dried up rampant corruption had to be resorted to in the state in order to finance the party, he alleged. UNI