TN mulls legal action over deemed univ tag for med colleges

TN mulls legal action over deemed univ tag for med colleges 

TIMES NEWS NETWORK 08.07.2026

Chennai : Tamil Nadu is considering legal action, including moving the Supreme Court early next week, after some medical colleges in the state were granted ‘deemed university’ status — a change that could wipe out state quota seats and reshape access to medical education across the region.

Officials said that while 650 MBBS seats are likely to be removed from the state’s seat matrix since allotments to deemed universities are handled by the Centre, three more colleges have told the govt that they are expected to be added to the list soon. These institutions will no longer be obligated to reserve seats for students admitted through the state’s counselling process. “This will mean at least 700 govt quota seats, and more than 50 seats meant for govt school students, will be affected,” a senior health department official said. 

On Tuesday, after day-long discussions with legal experts, a senior legal officer questioned how these institutions were granted the permission, since UGC norms for this status require a high NAAC grade across three cycles, or NBA accreditation for two thirds of programmes, or a top  100 overall or top-50 discipline-specific NIRF ranking for three consecutive years. 

While a legal challenge may take months to resolve, student counsellors and academicians have urged the govt to rein in fees at deemed institutions, as directed by the HC. The state has no control over fees charged by deemed universities, since they fall outside state fee committee’s purview. Under the existing structure, the committee fixed annual MBBS tuition for govt quota seats in self-financing colleges and private universities at ₹4.35 lakh to ₹5.40 lakh, and for management-quota seats at ₹15 lakh to ₹16.2 lakh. 

The Centre has not fixed tuition fees for deemed universities, which charge between ₹20 lakh and ₹35 lakh a year. “Earlier, an association of private universities moved the court to prevent this from being implemented. For some reason, that case was withdrawn. So the state or the Centre must now implement the high court order,” said N Narendran, a NEET coach.  If the govt cannot immediately regulate fees, experts want it to adopt Karnataka’s approach.

 “In Karnataka, deemed universities continue sharing seats with the state govt despite their elevated status. At least six of the 12 deemed universities share around 188 seats with the state quota, at fees ranging from ₹1.5 lakh to ₹6 lakh,” said student counsellor Manickavel Arumugam. “That’s one way to ensure meritorious and govt school students passing out this year are not punished,” he said. 

“For many meritorious students from modest backgrounds, this is a critical pathway into medicine, as they can only afford subsidised, govt-regulated seats,” he added. The state medical university, meanwhile, is appealing to UGC and NMC, stating that it never issued a no-objection certificate for the change in affiliation to these institutions.