Pune: 400 new post graduate seats will be allocated to Government Medical Colleges in Maharashtra. The cities to benefit from this addition include Pune, Mumbai, and Nagpur. The declaration of this increase was made by Dr Pravin Shingare, State Director, Medical Education and Research, immediately after Finance Minister, Arun Jaitley's announcement that the Centre was going to create an additional 5000 PG seats. Maharashtra would gain an additional 800 seats, he further added.

"The Union Health Ministry has called for a meeting to discuss the distribution of seats," Shingare said. "It was after a proposal drafted by state members of the Medical Council of India (MCI) — including Dr S D Nanadkar, Dilip Mhaisekar, Dr C B Mhaske and late Dr Kishore Taori — that the Centre admitted the need for specialist doctors to strengthen secondary and tertiary levels of healthcare."

Pune's BJ Medical College is likely to get 40 new seats from the kitty. It presently has a strength of a 110 PG seats.

There are 1,200 existing PG seats spread across 16 medical colleges. Another 1,800 seats have been allotted to private medical colleges and deemed university run medical colleges.

"Roll out DNB courses in big district hospitals, strengthen PG teaching in select ESI and municipal corporation hospitals and encourage reputed private hospitals to start DNB courses," opined Dr Sagar Mundada, Chairman, Youth Wing, IMA.

According to Shingare, there will be a phase-wise introduction of DNB courses. "For instance, we are likely to set aside 100 seats for DNB courses at 20 district hospitals in 2018 and then upgrade later," he revealed.