New Delhi: The three-member committee, headed by former Chief Justice of India R. M. Lodha, has accorded approval for an additional 950 MBBS seats in self-financing and minority medical colleges in Kerala in the current academic year.
The Amrita School of Medicine in Kochi and the Thiruvananthapuram Medical College Hospital will get an additional 10 post-graduate seats as well.
Proposals to establish 26 medical colleges in the country, including two in Kerala, have also been sanctioned by the committee. An additional 3,900 seats will now be available under the government quota.
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The two new medical institutions in the State, SR Medical College and Research Center in Thiruvananthapuram and the Kerala Medical College, Palakkad, will get 150 seats each.
The remaining seats will be divided among the PK Das Institute of Medical Sciences (3rd batch,150 seats); Al-Azhar Medical College and Super Specialty Hospital (3rd batch, 150 seats); Mount Zion Medical College, Pathanamthitta (3rd batch, 100 seats); and the DM Wayanad Institute of Medical Sciences (4th batch, 150 seats).
It has also permitted the government to increase the intake of students by 50 to the new MBBS admissions at the Kannur Medical College and the Dr. Somervell Memorial CSI Medical College, Karakonam, Thiurvananthapuram, each.
However, the proposal to increase the existing number of 100 seats at the Kozhikode Medical College Hospital has been rejected.
A total of eight PG seats have been offered to the Amrita Hospital in Kochi. The seats will be divided among the four MCH/DM programs in Gynecology and Oncology, Pediatrics and Surgery, Reproductive Medicine, and Rheumatology.
The Department of Endocrinology at the Thiruvananthapuram Medical College Hospital will have two new PG seats.
The committee indicated that the proposals submitted by eight institutions including the Malabar Medical College Hospital, Kozhikode, will be considered favorably and a final decision in this regard will be announced soon.
The institutions were directed to submit an affidavit stating that the inadequacies found in the infrastructure facilities were addressed, besides a bank guarantee of Rs 2 crore amounting to one-year royalty excluding the stipulated fee for the application for increasing the intake of students.
An inspection to review the facilities provided by the institutions will be conducted after September 30.
Those who fail to meet the prescribed standards will be denied permission to make fresh MBBS admissions in the next two academic years, said the committee, which was appointed by the Supreme Court in last May to oversee the functioning of the Medical Council of India (MCI).
The committee, which also has Dr. Shiv Sareen, Director, Institute of Liver and Biliary Sciences in New Delhi, and Vinod Rai, former Comptroller & Auditor General of India as members, considered several applications, including those that were earlier rejected by the MCI.
