The Kerala Professional Colleges Bill And Social Justice

THE Kerala Professional Colleges (Prohibition of Capitation Fee, Regulation of Admission, Fixation of Non Exploitative Fee and Other Measures to Ensure Equity and Excellence in Professional Education) Bill, 2006 serves as a prototype for all future legislations on ensuring social justice in private self financing institutions. The Bill is formulated on the lines of the 93rd (104 in its original form) constitutional amendment that empowers the state to make any special provisions by law, for the advancement of any socially and educationally backward classes of citizens or for the scheduled castes or the scheduled tribes.

The Supreme Court in its verdict in the Pai Foundation's case and subsequent cases allowed the government to ban capitation fee and to regulate fee structure to prevent profiteering. The court in the Inamdar case also ruled that in order to ensure excellence and maintenance of high standards in higher education, in national interest, the state could regulate admission procedure in private educational institutions, including minority and non-minority, through a ‘single window system’. The Supreme Court’s direction to reserve 15 per cent seats for NRIs and utilise the additional amount collected from such NRIs for the benefit of the students coming from economically weaker sections of the society; its direction to regulate fees and admissions etc. turned out to be the legal basis for the Kerala legislation.