The Medical Council of India (MCI) has rejected permission to 28 new medical colleges for academic year 2015-16 across the country including 13 in Government sector for their failure to meet the requisite educational standards as stipulated by it.
Among the new medical colleges proposed in the public sector were by Governments from Delhi (college at Rohini), Karnataka (Chitradurga and Tumkar), Andaman & Nicobar (Port Blair), Maharashtra (Satara, Sangali and Baramati), Uttar Pradesh (lucknow, Greater Noida and Saharanpur), Uttarakhand (Dehradun, Almora) and Nagaland (Kohima).
The private medical colleges which have not got approval from the medical education body have been proposed in Sitapur, lucknow, Unnao, Kanpur, Aligarh and Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh, Dehradun in Uttarakhand, Umarda and Jodhpur in Rajasthan, Himmatnagar and Junagarh in Gujarat, Kaithal and Panipat in Haryana, Indore in Madhya Pradesh, Mimadi in Andhra Pradesh.
Had all these medical colleges cleared MCI inspections, the country could have achieved an additional 1,250 MBBS seats in the Government sector and around 3,000 MBBS seats in the private segment for the 2015-16 academic year.
A detailed look at the assessment report of the proposals of the State Governments as well as those in private sector prepared in January this year shows that they seems to be in a hurry to open the new medical colleges without ensuring requisite teaching faculty and infrastructure to ensure education standard.
For instance, the Delhi Government has proposed medical college at Rohini with an annual intake of 100 MBBS students under Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University. However, during assessment of the physical and other teaching facilities available, the MCI panel found that deficiency of teaching faculty was 100 per cent while shortage of residents was 73 per cent. Besides, the building was still under construction.
The Uttarakhand Government’s plans to set up a new medical college at Almora with an annual intake of 100 MBBS students under HNB Uttarakhand Medical Education University was also shot down in view of acute shortage of teaching faculty and basic infrastructure to ensure requisite education standard.
In a curious proposal from the Karnataka Government, the MCI team during inspection of facilities available for establishment of a new medical college at Chitradurga in the State found that there was no Dean / Medical Superintendent / faculty / staff (technical & non-technical) and also no college building. “Construction work has not even started. District Surgeon showed a barren vacant piece of land where the proposed medical college is to come up. It was totally empty land, no sign board, no leveling, no excavation, no construction,” says the MCI report. Presently, there are a total 54,348 medical seats in the 404 colleges across the country including 25,743 seats in 189 government run colleges and 28,605 seats in 215 medical educational institutes in the private sector.