Bengaluru: The Medical Council of India (MCI) has denied seven medical colleges in the state permission to start new PG courses. The decision was taken at the post graduate medical education committee of the council held in mid-November.

These colleges could not meet the laid down criteria. This is an unhappy situation for PG aspirants as there are very few seats available for the taking.

Al Ameen Medical College, Vijayapur, got the nod for two seats in MD Anesthesiology. But their applications for general medicine, radiodiagnosis, orthopaedics and ophthalmology were rejected. KIMS Bangalore failed to meet the expectation in MS general surgery after MCI noted a decrease in the number of patients and operations in the past two years.

A J Institute of Medical Science and Research Centre and Belgaum Institute of Medical Sciences also did not get clearances. Only Srinivas Institute of Medical Research and Sapthagiri Institute of Medical Sciences and Research found some relief. However, they got the nod for disciplines that are non clinical and therefore not much in demand among the student community. This includes microbiology, biochemistry, community medicine, forensic medicine and physiology.

The MCI panel refused nod to the colleges citing various reasons like few patients and inadequate infrastructure to low stipend to post graduates and lack of faculty. In two cases, MCI found the number of inpatients daily much higher than the number of beds available in the hospital, leading them to mark the data as “non-genuine and imaginary”.