📰 From the news · Overcharged / hidden fees
Hall tickets withheld, biometric attendance blocked over a fifth year's fees: Telangana's fee committee orders private medical colleges to refund the excess, 14 August 2026
In Telangana, private medical college fees are fixed in block periods by the Telangana Admission and Fee Regulatory Committee (TAFRC). In August 2026 it had to tell colleges in writing that the MBBS course lasts four and a half years, not five, and that fifth-year fees paid were owed back.
According to Telangana Today, TAFRC issued a circular on Friday 14 August 2026 warning private medical colleges against making students pay their full five-year tuition upfront, calling the practice a "matter of serious concern" and warning of stringent action against the managements responsible. Complaints from students admitted from the 2020 block onward alleged that colleges had withheld hall tickets, blocked biometric attendance, barred students from classes and campuses over fee disputes, and collected stipends without disbursing them or made students return them. Medical Dialogues, reporting the letter on 17 August, said it was addressed to the secretaries and correspondents of private minority and non-minority medical institutions and directed them "to collect tuition fee only for the prescribed 4.5 year duration of MBBS Course from students". Any fifth-year fee already collected was to be refunded immediately.
The letter set out the arithmetic for six sample colleges. At an annual fee of Rs 14,50,000, the total for 4.5 years is Rs 65,25,000, with Rs 7,25,000 due for the final semester; at Rs 11,55,000 a year the total is Rs 51,97,500. The fee is collected in five instalments at the start of each academic year, and a college that collected less earlier may collect the balance, but never more than the prescribed total. The structure applies to the 2021 to 2023 block. Medical Dialogues noted that the circular followed the NMC's public notice of 7 April 2026, citing Sections 10 and 24 of the NMC Act 2019, the 2024 curriculum (54 months plus a year of internship) and Supreme Court interim directions in Abhishek Yadav v Union of India on stipends and internship charges.
The mechanism is an accounting trick with a human cost. A nine-semester course was being billed as five full years, and the leverage was access: hall tickets, biometric attendance, the campus gate. Some complaints said the intern's stipend was clawed back. The regulator acted only once students complained.
For a student the arithmetic is the defence. Multiply the annual fee by 4.5 and compare it with what the college asks for; if asked to pay for five years, cite the 14 August 2026 TAFRC circular and the NMC notice. Keep every receipt. An intern should receive a stipend and never return it. Complaints go to TAFRC. Ask the same of any college abroad: how many years of tuition are you being asked for, and does the course run that long?
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This is a news-sourced case summary written by the TrustMBBS team, not a first-person account; see the sources above. They reflect one person's experience and are not a verdict on any institution. Report your own: Report a scam or tell your story.