Maharashtra NEET Counselling 2025: MBBS fees at most expensive medical college slashed, hikes cleared for some

Maharashtra NEET UG Counselling 2025: The Maharashtra fee regulator has substantially slashed the fees for both undergraduate (UG) and postgraduate (PG) courses at the state’s most expensive medical college, while allowing some hike in MD, MS and MBBS fees at several others.
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The Fee Regulating Authority (FRA), in its meetings on Tuesday and Wednesday, decided to cut the annual MD/MS fees at Vedantaa Institute of Medical Sciences (VIMS) Palghar from last year’s Rs 19.32 lakh to Rs 13.11 lakh – a difference of Rs 6.21 lakh – while the MBBS fee structure was brought down from Rs 17.03 lakh to Rs 15.57 lakh, making it one of the steepest fee reductions by the regulator in the recent years.

VIMS Palghar, the only medical college in the state set up by a private limited company, had posted the highest charges among all private medical colleges in Maharashtra last year. While its MBBS course continues to be the costliest one in the new academic year – several colleges are yet to have their fee structure finalised – its PG programme is no longer at the top of the fee table.

Also read NEET Counselling 2025: MBBS fees skyrocket, cross Rs 1 crore at 32 deemed-university medical colleges

The CET Cell Maharashtra announced the state NEET UG counselling schedule 2025 on Wednesday; registration has begun.

MBBS Fees: Maharashtra private medical colleges

FRA has fixed the MBBS fees for 11 out of 24 private medical colleges in the state, while also deciding MD/MS fees for five of them. Apart from VIMS Palghar, another institute, NY Tasgaonkar Institute Of Medical Science, Karjat (Raigad), saw an even higher Rs 1.67 lakh drop in its MBBS course fees – from Rs 7.9 lakh to Rs 6.22 lakh. The Padmashri Dr Vithalrao Vikhe Patil Medical College, Ahmednagar, too, had its MD/MS fee clipped from Rs 10 lakh to Rs 9 lakh.

In two instances – MBBS at Rajendra Gode Medical College, Amravati and Parbhani Medical College – there was no revision.

MBBS fees at Maharashtra’s private colleges (in Rs.)

How FRA fixes MD, MS, MBBS fees

For most of the other institutes, the regulator permitted hikes in a range of Rs 50,000 to Rs 1 lakh. BKL Walawalkar Rural Medical College, Chiplun (Ratnagiri) recorded the highest increase of Rs 1.06 lakh in MBBS course fees, while SMBT Institute of Medical Sciences and Research Centre, Nashik was allowed to charge Rs 1.18 lakh more for MD/MS.

MD/MS fees at Maharashtra’s private colleges (in Rs.)

The FRA follows an expenditure-based model to determine fees at unaided professional institutes.

The medical colleges’ audited accounts of the previous years are reviewed to calculate the per head fees, ensuring no profiteering for the institutes. However, the permitted fees include a 10% development fee, apart from the tuition fee, to allow for further expansion of the institutes. The regulator provides for significantly higher fees for NRI and management quota seats.

In fact, the authority, in a meeting last week, reversed its recent decision to reduce the cap on fee for the management quota seats of post-graduate health science courses (including MD/MS, MDS) from four times the regular fee to three times. In doing so, the authority restored the fee norm for medical programmes that were prevalent from 2018 till a few months ago.

The U-turn came after the Association of the Managements of Unaided Private Medical and Dental Colleges (AMUPMDC) made a representation to FRA, criticising the 'unilateral' decision to lower the maximum allowable charges for PG management quota seats.

The fee regulator had changed the medical fee structure in an April meeting as part of its decision to extend the provision for higher NRI and management quota fees to all technical, higher and agriculture programmes, including engineering, management and pharmacy. Through this measure, all professional colleges were allowed to charge management quota candidates three times the regular fees, with the NRI candidates required to pay a maximum of five times.

For the last eight years, only the health science institutes in the state had differential fee calculations -- three and four times the regular fee for UG and PG management seats, respectively, and five times for all NRI seats. With FRA deciding to introduce uniform fee norms for all professional courses, the higher fee ceiling for PG courses was brought at par with UG courses, much to the chagrin of private medical colleges.