New Delhi: The number of MBBS seats in the country has grown by more than 110 percent in the past 10 years, from 51,348 in 2013-14 to 1,07,948 for the academic year 2023-24, the Ministry of Education informed the Lok Sabha Monday.
While the number of MBBS seats in government medical colleges has risen from 24,468 in 2013-14 to 56,283 in 2023-24, according to the ministry, the number of seats in private medical colleges has gone up from 26,880 to 51,665 over the same period.
The information was provided by minister of state (MoS) for education Subhas Sarkar in response to a question raised by YSR Congress leader Y.S. Avinash Reddy in Parliament.
Reddy had asked if in 2022, only 2.6 percent of the nearly 1.9 million candidates who wrote the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) for admission to undergraduate medical courses in India, managed to secure a seat in a government college.
The minister in his written reply said that 17,64,571 candidates took the NEET-UG exam in 2022, of which “95,313 students got admitted to MBBS courses in medical colleges in India for the academic year 2022-23 [according to National Medical Commission report]. Of these, 48,929 students or 2.77 percent of the candidates who appeared for the exam got admission in government medical colleges.”
The National Medical Commission (NMC) is the medical education regulator in the country.
The increase in the number of undergraduate seats in medical colleges in the country has been complemented by an increase in the number of medical aspirants, said the ministry in response to another question posed by a second MP.
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Rise in number of medical aspirants
Responding to a question posed by Telugu Desam Party MP Jayadev Galla, the ministry said that 20,87,462 medical aspirants had registered for the NEET-UG 2023 entrance examinations, a sharp increase from the 6,58,040 applicants in 2013.
Government sources had earlier told ThePrint that the central government had been putting in a concerted effort to raise the number of doctors in the country, and had facilitated the opening of a number of new medical colleges across states through its “One District One Medical College” policy.
The NMC has also reportedly proposed some changes in the Establishment of Medical College Regulations, 1999, to ease the opening of new medical colleges. One of them is to remove the requirement of having a functional hospital for at least two years before starting a medical college. According to the NMC, the move was aimed at easing the opening of medical colleges. The proposal, however, is yet to be implemented.
(Edited by Richa Mishra)
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