Sikar, Barmer medical colleges in Rajasthan to take off

Jaipur: The Medical Education Department which had been earlier denied permission to start two new medical colleges in Barmer and Sikar, has now decided to communicate to the Medical Council of India(MCI), regarding its decision to work towards MCI compliance in these proposed medical colleges. The colleges are to become operational from the next academic year (2019-20).

The department plans to progress leaps and bounds in the direction of starting these two new colleges by making efforts to fulfill MCI compliances within a year's time.

The 2 medical colleges are part of the 7 announced by the central authorities in 2013-14. However, the Sikar and Barmer colleges having fallen short on MCI norms were disallowed take off. However, the remaining five will become operational for the upcoming session 2017-18) due to the labour put in by the medical education department to fulfill the earlier mentioned deficiencies.

"We have got the permission for five medical colleges. But, now we have decided to bring up the proposed medical colleges at Barmer and Sikar up to the MCI norms within one year. So that we will be able to start these two medical colleges also in next year," Anand Kumar, Principal Secretary, Medical Education Department told TOI.

Earlier this year, Rajasthan was reported to have suffered a set back wth the Medical Council of India (MCI), for the 2^nd consecutive year refusing to give permission for the starting of the proposed 7 new government medical colleges in the state.The Council's decision had also put the state government in an uncomfortable corner, as it had announced the medical colleges getting into the operational mode from the coming academic year.

The state government had been extremely optimistic about starting the academic sessions in these colleges from 2018-19 in at least 5 districts, namely Churu, Pali, Bhilwara, Bharatpur, and Dungarpur. However, all proposals for the five district colleges had been rejected by the Council and there was dim hope for the ones planned at Barmer and Sikar as these were not equipped right from the start to make this new beginning.

Read also:7 new government medical colleges in Rajasthan denied MCI approval

With the efforts of the department, if all goes well, the state will now have 13 operational government medical colleges as there are eight existing colleges in the districts of, Bikaner, Jhalawar, Jaipur, Jodhpur, Kota, Udaipur, Ajmer along with Jaipur's RUHS Medical College.