Losing hope: At least three students have approached the Karnataka Examinations Authority with a request to cancel their seats as they are not able to bear the cost. more-in Several candidates who obtained government quota seats in many private engineering and pharmacy colleges are stumped by the huge sum of fees they have allegedly been asked to cough up. This amount is in addition to the fees prescribed by the government. The colleges are charging these fees under various subheads including placement fees, lab fees, hostel fees, laboratory fees and so on. Citing that this practice is illegal, at least three students who obtained seats in the second round, have approached the Karnataka Examinations Authority (KEA) with a request to cancel their seats as they are not able to bear the cost. A student who obtained a seat a top private engineering college in Bengaluru said that he was asked to pay ?40,000 over and above the tuition fees he had already paid. “I am not in a position to bear the additional burden of ?40,000. I would instead prefer it if my money is refunded so that I could pursue B.Com,” he said helplessly, while waiting at the KEA office earlier this week. The fees for government quota in private engineering colleges is ?50,500 or ?56,000 per annum. This has been fixed by the government. The State government refused to yield to the private engineering college managements’ demand for a 10% hike in fees this year. The medical and dental fees however were hiked for the 2017-’18 academic year. Pharmacy colleges Besides engineering colleges, pharmacy colleges offering B-Pharma and Pharma-D courses are in fact charging excess fees of up to ?1.5 lakh. The fees fixed by the government is ?21,430 for government quota seats in private pharmacy colleges. The Admission Overseeing Committee, headed by Justice Anand Byrareddy, has received around three complaints for charging excess fees from engineering and pharmacy colleges. “Most students are glad that they have obtained the seat and do not want to confront the management for these illegal practices. Therefore, only a few of them come and lodge complaints with the committee,” a source in KEA said. ‘No choice’ A management representative of an engineering college claimed that colleges have no option but to charge excess as the fee fixed by the government was not enough to meet requirements. “Our expenditure is not enough to meet the infrastructural and faculty requirements. So, we have no option but to charge fees for all this to meet our costs,” a management representative said.

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