800 more MBBS, 700 PG medical seats- Karnataka Submits Proposal to NMC

Bengaluru: To realise its plans of enhancing the number of seats in government medical colleges in the State, the Karnataka Government has submitted a proposal to the National Medical Commission (NMC) seeking permission for 800 more MBBS and 700 more postgraduate medical seats.

Confirming this, Dr. Sharan Prakash Patil, the Minister of Medical Education and Skill Development, told The Hindu that the request to NMC has been made in light of the high demand for clinical courses.

"Most government colleges in Karnataka have more infrastructure and material for practising clinical courses and we are eligible to get more clinical seats," he told the Daily.

"Earlier, we used to give proposals for enhancement of only 100 to 150 seats in a couple of old medical colleges for PG courses. This year, except for the newly started government medical colleges in Chickballapur, Chikkamagaluru, Haveri, and Chitradurga, we have submitted a proposal for enhancement of seats in all other government medical colleges," he added.

Also Read: NMC Data shows Karnataka topping MBBS seats, UP with most medical colleges

He further told The Hindu that an enhancement of about 50 UG medical seats had been requested for each government medical college and added, "Without establishing new colleges, Karnataka can potentially get seats equivalent to opening four to five medical college this way."

Apart from this, Dr Patil further added that the Finance Department had advised for taking appropriate steps to ensure that government medical colleges were self-sustaining in the long run. He added that "In this regard, we have studied the models of different States, including Gujarat and others. Therefore, we are mulling over charging higher fees for the enhanced UG seats. It will bring good income to the government medical colleges and they will become self-sustaining. This will help colleges avoid dependence on the government fund."

The Hindu has reported that Minister Patil further pointed out that already 22 districts of the State has government medical colleges and and a GMC in Bagalkot and one is Kolar had been announced in the State Budget under the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) model. "Our next goal is to open cancer care centers, super-speciality hospitals and trauma care centres that will cover at least two or three districts each across the State. Many projects are already in progress, which will make more medical services available to the people at a lower cost," Dr. Patil told the Daily.

When asked about the possibility of a fee hike for the medical courses for the academic year 2025-2026, the Minister said that so far, private medical colleges had not submitted any proposal to the Government seeking a fee hike. At present, the private medical institutes in Gujarat are offering 40% of the seats as government quota seats, and for this, the Government has fixed a fee of Rs Rs 1.20 lakh.

For the remaining 40% private quota seats, the Government will fix the fee. Last year, the fee for this was Rs 12 lakh per annum. The fee for the remaining 20% of seats under the NRI and management quota seats is fixed by the institutes themselves.

As per the data released by the National Medical Commission regarding the state-wise lists of MBBS, PG medical and Super-Speciality seats available across all medical colleges in the country, there are a total of 1,18,190 MBBS seats across 780 medical colleges. The data revealed that the highest number of MBBS seats were in Karnataka, while the maximum number of medical colleges were in Uttar Pradesh.

Medical Dialogues had earlier reported that Karnataka was likely to have 1500 more MBBS seats as the Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences (RGUHS) had cleared the recommendations made by the Local Inspection Committee (LIC) for increasing the quantum of seats at eight private and 16 state-run medical colleges across the State.