New Delhi: As many students rejoice at their ranking in the NEET-2018 results announced on Monday June 4, the union health ministry served a shocker as it denied permission to 82 medical colleges from admitting students for the 2018-19 academic session. As a result of the order, this time around there will be 10,000 fewer seats available for students to choose.
In its order, the ministry rejected proposal to approve 68 new medical colleges. The list has names of 8 new colleges from Karnataka who had applied for approval. Out of these, 7 are government medical colleges including Bowring and Lady Curzon Medical College and Research Institute, Bengaluru, Chitradurga Inst. of Medical Sciences Govt. District Hospital, Haveri Institute of Medical Sciences Govt. District Hospital, Yadgiri Institute of Medical Sciences, Chikkaballapur Institute of Medical Sciences and Chikkamagalur Institute of Medical Sciences. Private medical college Sri Siddhartha Institute of Medical Sciences and Research Centre was also denied permission to accept students this year.
The JP Nadda-led ministry also rejected renewal applications of 12 government colleges and 70 private colleges from admitting students. With this 10,430 MBBS seats out of the 64,000 normally available will be blocked. As many as 9 colleges from Karnataka, including 8 private colleges, feature in this list. Prominent among these are St. John’s Medical College Bangalore, Koppal Institute of Medical Science, The Oxford Medical College, Yadavanahalli, Sambharam Institute of Medical Sciences Kolar, Akash Institute of Medical Sciences, Bangalore, Al-Ameen Medical College and Hospital Bijapur, Shridevi Institute of Medical Science and Research Tumkur and Vydehi Institute of Medical Sciences and Research Institute.
The order said that the applications of these colleges were disapproved on the recommendation of the Medical Council of India (MCI). According to news reports, a member of the MCI’s academic committee said that the colleges were denied permission for lack of proper facilities for a medical college.
Interestingly, the union cabinet had approved plans to open 24 new government sponsored medical colleges by 2021-22. This was in addition to the 58 medical colleges to be established and attached to district hospitals by 2019.
