After tough bargaining between the AP government and the managements, it was decided to reserve 50 per cent of seats in each of the 14 private medical colleges and 11 dental colleges for being filled by the Convenor of EAMCET-2003. The managements will have the discretion to fill the remaining 50 per cent from the present 15 per cent.

The Chief Minister will finalise the fee structure, which has been proposed by the Medical and Health Department. The statutory reservation for SC, ST and OBC categories is now mandatory in private medical colleges in the state. So far 85 per cent of the seats used to be filled by the EAMCET convenor and the rest by the managements.

Following the Supreme Court order earlier this year directing that private colleges could fill up to 75 per cent of the seats as they liked, the government initiated a dialogue with the managements asking them to reserve a reasonably good number seats to be filled by the EAMCET convenor. After several rounds of talks, the seats had been classified into four categories, A,B,C and D.

In the A category, 25 per cent of seats will be filled by the convenor in the open category based on the rank in EAMCET-2003. Another 25 per cent seats have been allocated to the B category which will be filled by the convenor with SC, ST and OBC candidates based on the EAMCET rank. Of the 25 per cent of seats in the C category, the managements will conduct their own counselling sessions. Forty-eight per cent of these seats will be for SC, ST and OBC candidates and the remaining 52 per cent will be filled with open category students based on EAMCET ranks. For the D category, the remaining 25 per cent of seats will be filled by the management by those students who had completed Intermediate or Plus Two in the biology, physics and chemistry group. The discretion of filling up these seats is solely with the management.

The new system will come into force from the current academic year in the light of the Supreme Court verdict on the admission process. The managements have agreed to follow the rule of reservations in the C category, which is not being followed in other states.

As regards the fee structure, the department has four proposals. According to sources in the department, the government is likely to fix between Rs 50,000 and Rs 70,000 per annum for A and B category of seats, between Rs1.25 lakh and Rs 1.75 lakh for the C category and Rs 4 lakh per annum for the D category. There are 1,600 seats in the private colleges in the state.

For the dental seats the fee structure would be between Rs 30,000 and Rs 50,000 per annum for both A and B, between Rs 60,000 and Rs 1.2 lakh for the C category and Rs 2 lakh for the D category seats.

The managements had been asking for a fee structure of Rs 5 lakh per annum for seats in the management quota and between Rs 2.30 lakh and Rs 2.50 lakh per annum for others for the medical seats.