Medical fee to be regulated

chennai: even as applications for the 1,483 seats in the 14 government medical colleges will be available from june 3, the state health department has promised to crackdown on colleges extracting capitation fees from students. students planning to pursue mbbs degrees this year need not be bothered by the exorbitant capitation fees demanded by private medical colleges, as the health minister has taken it upon himself to look into the matter seriously. the state health department will also issue guidelines on the tuition fees set by the private colleges affiliated to the dr mgr medical university. encouraging parents to approach the director of medical education, dr vinayakam, with complaints regarding capitation fees, the health minister m.r.k.paneerselvam said,.' medicine has become an attractive career option again after the it collapse, unlike last year, when the trend was in favour of engineering and it'. the last date for the submission of application forms is june 17, and the directorate will release the list of rank holders on june 28. counseling begins on july 6, and admissions will take place in september. 'we are still calculating this year's cut-off marks. last year, the cut off was 197 for oc, 194 for bc, 186 for sc and 171.25 for st communities,' said dr sheela, secretary for medical counseling for 2009 - 2010. the number of mbbs seats remains 1,745, including 262 in all india quota.