Sivaganga MP Karti Chidambaram on Monday urged the Union education ministry to set up a mechanism to monitor the companies providing online courses. While speaking in the Lok Sabha, he claimed that these companies are auto-debiting amounts from aspiring candidates. He also questioned the quality of courses offered.

The Congress MP said that there was no vetting of courses provided by the companies.

“The curriculum has to be vetted, you have to have a staff of a certain calibre, you need to pay the staff a certain salary according to UGC or as per government regulations. But today, there are online education companies which are worth billions of dollars, some of them are worth more than the entire educational budget of India. These companies provide education online… not vetted by anybody. These companies now are engaging in predatory marketing practices where they prey upon the aspirational poorer people who want to give their children a better education, who want to supplement their education which they are not getting in government schools… they auto-debit their accounts,” Karti said.

Calling the companies ‘loan sharks’, Karti said they are thrusting these courses on the unsuspecting people of India. He added that there are many social activists who brought up these issues but the companies flex their muscles and take down these complaints from social media.