The aspiring doctors have a reason to be happy as the Board of Governors of the Medical Council of India (MCI) has given its approval for increasing PG medical seats for MD and MS programmes by more than 4,800 in 2020-2021.
BoG Chairman and Niti Aayog member V K Paul, as quoted by PTI, said, “Prime Minister Narendra Modi government in 2014 had promised to double PG and UG medical seats by 2024. So, in that direction the Board of Governors-vested with power of the Medical Council of India has given its approval to increase post graduate medical seats (broad specialty) in 2020-21 session by 4,807.”
As per reports, 36,192 PG medical seats will be available in the new academic session counselling. The increase in seats is more than the total number of additional seats created in the past five years, stated Paul.
In 2014-15, both government and private medical colleges across the country had nearly 23,000 PG medical seats.
To augment medical seats, the new or existing private medical colleges have been linked with a functional district hospital under Niti Aayog’s public-private partnership (PPP) model.
Niti Aayog has teamed up with the Ministry of Health to encourage hospitals to offer resident doctors Diplomate or Fellow of National Board (DNB/FNB) courses under the National Board of Examination.
According to the new district residency programme planned by the Board of Governors, every postgraduate medical student has to work at a district hospital for three months in order to get their degrees.