4800 out of 75000 Medical seats reserved for EWS students
4800 MBBS Seat reserved for EWS students – Shri Harsh Vardhan who is the Union health Minister has stated that currently around 4800 MBBS seats are reserved for those students who belong to Economic Weaker Section (EWS) category. The minister made this revelation while the Question Hour was going on in Lok Sabha on Friday. In the recent years, the govt has taken several initiatives to increase Medical seats across numerous medical institutions across the country.
Pinaki Mishra of Biju Janata Dal (BJD), Mohammad Javed of Congress and Manguta Srinivasulu Reddy of YSRCP had asked questions regarding this matter – in response to their queries the Health Minister made this answer. He further stated that in the last two years, there has been an increase of 24,968 seats in Medical Stream of both Undergraduate and Postgraduate categories. During the 2017-18 and 2018-19 period, there has been an increase of 2153 PG seats as well as 15,815 UG seats. During 2019-20, 2153 PG seats and 10,565 UG seats have increased.
In National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) 2019, over 75,000 candidates have qualified for admission into medical courses. The Minister said that those colleges where MBBS courses have got affiliated, they need to start PG courses within three years. Several referral and district hospitals are being upgraded by the administration in order to start new medical colleges.
Currently under different centre schemes, work for establishment of 82 medical colleges are currently going on. Here the Centre is providing 60% of funding and the rest is being provided by state government. The total establishment of one Medical College is costing around Rs 189 crore. For the development of medical colleges and hospitals, the govt has already released funds worth Rs 7507 crore to the Union Territories as well as the state govts.