West Bengal CM to hold meeting with private educational bodies on fee structure

West Bengal Education Minister Partha Chatterjee today said that the government would discuss fee disparity with private educational institutions.

Chatterjee said that Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee would hold a meeting with the heads of private colleges and other educational institutions in this regard.

Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of "Education Interface", a career fair, the minister said, "We never impose anything, but we will reason with them. We are all committed to improving the education scenario in the state," the minister said. Expressing his government's resolve to see that poor and meritorious students get opportunity to study in the institutions of their choice, Chatterjee said, "We will urge private institutions and universities to reserve a certain percentage of seats for them."

Pointing at the trend of students leaving the state for higher studies in the technical field, Chatterjee said, "We want our talent to remain in the state ....Technologically our state has made a lot of advances. But we have to ensure that our talents get proper backing. We need to retain them." He called upon private institutions to put on the Internet the number of seats available across different streams apart from organising career fairs.

Accusing the previous Left Front government of playing havoc with the future of students in Bengal, Chatterjee said, "They had abolished English for 17 years and done immense harm to the future of our students." On the three-language forumla mooted by the state, Chatterjee said, "We never said that everyone has to write his papers in Bangla as first language. All we have suggested is Bengali should be one of the three languages in school curriculum."