Govt to increase seats for medical PG courses

The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare is implementing a centrally sponsored scheme namely “Upgradation of existing state government/central government medical colleges to increase PG seats”.

The Minister of State (Health and Family Welfare), Ashwini Kumar Choubey, stated this in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday.

The funding pattern is 90:10 by central and state Governments respectively for north-eastern states and special category states. It is 60:40 for other states with the upper ceiling cost pegged at Rs 1.20 crore per seat.

Seventy two government medical colleges in 21 states/UTs have been approved for increasing 4058 new PG seats under the Phase-I of the scheme and 5 government medical colleges have been approved in 3 states for increasing 98 new PG seats under the Phase-II of the scheme till date.

“Further, under section 10A of the IMC Act, 1956 applications were received for starting/increasing of PG courses / seats for the academic session 2019-20 and a total of 2153 new PG seats have been permitted,” the minister said.

The Union government has approved/announced 22 new AIIMS in the country. Six AIIMS at Patna (Bihar), Raipur (Chhattisgarh), Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh), Bhubaneswar (Orissa), Jodhpur (Rajasthan) and Rishikesh (Uttaranchal) are functional.