New Delhi: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said Saturday that 10,000 new seats in medicine would be created in the upcoming fiscal, taking forward an announcement by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his last Independence Day speech that promised 75,000 seats over the next five years.
“Our government has added almost 1.1 lakh undergraduate and postgraduate medical education seats in ten years, an increase of 130 percent. In the next year, 10,000 additional seats will be added in medical colleges and hospitals, towards the goal of adding 75,000 seats in the next 5 years,” Sitharaman said in her Union Budget speech.
The Economic Survey 2025, tabled by the government in Parliament Friday, had said the number of medical colleges in India now stand at 780, as compared to 387 before 2014. The report also showed there were now 1,18,137 MBBS seats and 73,157 post-graduate seats in the country.
The government’s declaration to add additional seats on top of these numbers have come amid growing unease about the lack of faculty and the subsequent degradation in the training of future doctors in many medical colleges in India, mainly the ones opened over the last few years.
Among other announcements for the sector was the government setting up day-care cancer centres in all district hospitals in the next three years, 200 of which would be established in 2025-26.
Overall, the healthcare sector will see only a marginal rise in allocation in the upcoming fiscal.
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Ayushman Bharat sees moderate hike
The government has now allocated Rs 99,858.56 crore for the Union health ministry—Rs 95,957.87 crore for the health and family welfare department and Rs 3,900.69 crore for the health research department.
Cumulatively, the allocation is just marginally higher than the Rs 90,958.63 crore proposed in FY 25, and the revised budget of Rs 89,974.12 crore. In other terms, the health ministry has an allocation just 10.9 percent higher than the revised budget of the ongoing fiscal — barely enough to cover inflation.
A key scheme where the budget allocation will see a significant rise is Ayushman Bharat-Pradhan Mantri Jan Aarogya Yojana (AB-PMJAY), the Centre’s flagship healthcare scheme started in 2018.
In Budget 2025-26, the government has proposed to contribute Rs 9,400 crore for the programme, marking a rise of 23.6 percent from the revised budget’s Rs 7,600.53 crore.
When compared to the proposed budget for the scheme in the ongoing fiscal which stood at Rs 7,299 crore, the increase of 28.7 percent is even higher.
Under AB-PMJAY, beneficiaries are entitled to cashless hospitalisation of up to Rs 5 lakh for secondary- and tertiary-level healthcare in empanelled hospitals.
Around 12.3 crore families of poor socio-economic status have been covered under the programme so far. Last year, the scheme was extended to all aged 70 and above, irrespective of their income status.
The National Health Mission, a key scheme under which the Centre supports states for strengthening healthcare systems and running several disease control programmes, will see an allocation of Rs 37,226.92 crore in FY 26, as compared to the revised budget of Rs 30,000 crore in the ongoing fiscal.
The Economic Survey report tabled by the government Friday had underlined that the increase in government spending on health has an important implication for the reduction of financial hardship endured by households.
In the total health expenditure (THE) between FY15 and FY22, it showed the share of the government healthcare expenditure (GHE) had increased from 29 percent to 48 percent.
During the same period, the share of out-of-pocket expenditure (OOPE) in the THE declined from 62.6 percent to 39.4 per cent, the report said.
The National Health Accounts released by the government in September last year, however, had revealed that GHE share in the country’s total gross domestic product (GDP) was 1.84 percent in 2021-22, against the government’s own promise of taking it to 2.5 percent by 2025, as outlined by the National Health Policy 2017.
(Edited by Tikli Basu)
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I am talking about “Increasing Medical seats”
There are no medical teachers even for the existing medical students undergraduate or postgraduate. Allowing private practice has been a disaster.. teachers are often truant from their colleges hospitals. Very little teaching /clinical training is happening in most medical colleges even in Mumbai.
The government should constitute a committee of Senior Medical teachers from all over the country and take their counsel. Otherwise we will not get more doctors but more quacks.