Jharkhand to move Supreme Court for MBBS seats of debarred govt medical colleges

Jharkhand: A petition by the Jharkhand government challenging the centre's decision to cut MBBS seats at two government medical colleges is soon be filed. The decision to move court comes at a time of uncertainty over medical admissions.

State health secretary Nidhi Khare, informed the Telegraph on Monday that all formalities were complete and that the petition would be filed on Tuesday. Khare is in Delhi with her team to complete all formalities.

"There is already a severe crisis of doctors and specialists in our state. If the MBBS seats get reduced further how will doctors be trained?" she told Telegraph.

Medical dialogues team had earlier reported that the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare had denied renewal permission to 82 medical colleges costing more than 11,000 seats

Read Also: 11800 Seats lost: 82 medical colleges not given MBBS Renewal by Health Ministry

The Centre has ordered a seat reduction at PMCH (Dhanbad) and MGM (Jamshedpur) owing to faculty crunch, inadequate resources and other gaps noted by Medical Council of India teams after inspections, however, there is no clarity on how many seats will remain with the two colleges.

With a slot of 300 MBBS seats , RIMS Jharkhand leads with 150, followed by MGM with 100 and PMCH-50. But, except RIMS, which is untouched, the scenario at the two other medical colleges is not clear despite a week having passed since the NEET results were announced reported the Telegraph.

Both MGM and PMCH principals Dr A.C. Akhori and Dr A. Biswas said they had not received any communication from the Centre.

Khare said health ministry officials had been met with for MGM being spared seat reduction, keeping in mind the Jharkhand situation of lack of enough doctors and fewer medical seats.

Against sanctioned posts of 4,228 doctors, the state has only 1,819, a shortfall of 56.92 percent. The situation only gets worse for specialists; against a required 1,690, only 559 posts are filled, a shortfall of 67 percent.