Karnataka Govt asks Centre, NMC to sanction 15 percent NRI quota by creating 508 additional MBBS seats in 22 GMCs

Karnataka- To start a 15 percent NRI quota, the state government has recently requested the National Medical Commission (NMC) to sanction 508 supernumerary MBBS seats in government autonomous medical colleges under the Department of Medical Education from the academic year 2025-26 onwards.

As per the recent report by PTI, Karnataka Medical Education Minister Sharan Prakash Patil said in a statement that he has written a letter to the NMC chairman requesting him to approve 15 per cent NRI quota by creating 508 additional MBBS seats for admission in 22 government medical colleges in the state.

"Supernumerary is nothing but creating additional seats over and above the annual sanctioned intake of UG-MBBS seats within the government medical colleges," Patil said in a statement.

The reason behind requesting for additional seats is that despite budgetary allocations, fees received from students, central and state grants and other donations, these autonomous medical institutions in Karnataka are still facing a shortage of funds. Therefore, to make these institutions centres of excellence, additional funds are necessary as it will help in increasing the quality of education, training, maintenance, purchase of medical equipment and drugs, handling patient load, improving infrastructure, faculty numbers and research.

To justify the proposal to have an NRI quota in 22 government medical colleges in the state, the minister cited the UGC guidelines for the admission of international students and additional seats in UG and PG programmes. Also, cited the National Education Policy 2020, which emphasises on admission of international students in Indian higher educational institutions for global access.

Besides, the minister also proposed to fix the annual fee at Rs 25 lakh per student, which would fetch the medical education department Rs 127 crore in the first year and Rs 571.5 crore in the fifth year. On this, Patil said, “I am confident that the Centre would accede to the State's demand to sanction 15 per cent NRI quota by creating supernumerary MBBS seats and enable the state to start NRI quota in government medical colleges from the academic year 2025-26”.

Moreover, there are 22 government medical colleges under the Medical Education Department in Karnataka, with an intake capacity of 3,450 seats for the year 2023-24, out of which 85 per cent i.e. 2,929 seats are from Karnataka quota and 521 seats (15 per cent) are from All India quota, the minister informed.