6 new medical colleges to come up in West Bengal, MBBS pool to cross 4500 mark

"6(six) new Government Medical Colleges are being established namely at Arambagh (Hooghly), Tamluk (Purba Medinipur), Barasat (North 24 Parganas), Jhargram, Uluberia (Howrah) & at Jalpaiguri under the Centrally Sponsored Scheme of "Establishment of new medical colleges attached with District/ Referral hospitals" Phase-II & Phase-III," stated a recent notice by the West Bengal Government.

The notice has further mentioned the proposed names of these six new medical colleges that are going to come up in the state.

Also Read: West Bengal proposes 6 new medical colleges with 100 MBBS seats each

Medical Dialogues had earlier reported that in an effort to increase the number of doctors in the state, the Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee-led West Bengal government had proposed setting up six new medical colleges in the state.

Earlier the State Health Officials had mentioned that once they get clearance from the Central Government, then they would be in a position to start at least two from the coming academic year.

In an attempt to gear up the process, in a July 9 notification, the WB Government had announced its commitment towards establishing six new medical colleges under the Centrally Sponsored Scheme. In fact, in order to obtain the "Letter of Permission" from the National Medical Commission (NMC), the State had decided to create posts according to the staffing norms as prescribed by NMC.

In pursuance, the Government in the July 9 order had sanctioned the creation of 1464 new posts of different categories for these proposed medical colleges with an intake capacity of 100 MBBS seats each.

Those posts included 36 posts for Professors, 120 for Associate Professor, 156 for assistant Professors, 240 posts of RMOs. "The posts hereby created would have to be filled up either through direct recruitment as per existing recruitment rules and method of recruitment and transfer posting in the respective cadre," the July 9 notification had mentioned.

In the recent memo dated 28.07.2021, the confirmation has come from the Government regarding these 6 new proposed medical colleges with a total intake capacity of 600 MBBS seats.

As per the latest data provided by the Union Health Ministry before the Lok Sabha, West Bengal has a total number of 26 medical colleges with an intake capacity of 4000 seats providing undergraduate medical education. Among these, 20 medical colleges belong to Government, and the rest of the 6 are private medical colleges.

After the setting up of these 6 new medical colleges, the State would have another 600 MBBS seats, and the medical education in the State would definitely receive a major boost.