Bandaru Dattatreya, Minister of State for labour & Employment (I/C), has informed that the ESIC would continue with already running three medical colleges at Rajajinagar, Bangalore (Karnataka), KK Nagar, Chennai (Tamil Nadu), Joka, Kolkata (WB) and one dental college at Rohini (Delhi). He further informed that the ongoing PG courses would also continue on similar lines. He was addressing a press conference on this issue at the ministry. Shankar Aggarwal, secretary, ministry and Anil Kumar Agarwal, director general, ESIC were also present.
Dattatreya also said that ESIC will not undertake any more medical education projects. He also said that ESIC will focus on its core function of providing social security to IPs. Presently, ESIC is running four medical colleges and one dental college. Besides this, eight more medical colleges are under construction. The core function of ESIC is to provide social security — cash benefit and medical benefit to the insured persons under the ESI scheme. It was felt that it would help the ESIC in concentrating at its core function if the ESIC exited from the field of medical education. Accordingly, the ESI corporation in its 163rd meeting took a decision to exit from medical education and, a decision in this regard was communicated to all concerned in January, 2015. This decision had fully protected the interest of students and most of other stakeholders. However, the students continued to have some apprehensions in this regard. Several representations from members of parliament, parents, public representatives and general public were received.
In the 164th meeting of the corporation, it was reiterated again that the interests of the students as well as the insured persons should be protected. Therefore, a revised circular was issued last week stating that ESIC would continue to admit students at its already running four medical colleges and one dental college. ESIC is continuing its efforts to transfer other medical college projects to state governments concerned.