Karnataka govt. objects to NMC guidelines on capping medical seats

Karnataka, TN object to NMC's ratio of 100 MBBS seats per million population; Govt to file objections.

The State government has decided to file its objections to recent guidelines of the National Medical Commission (NMC) fixing the number of medical seats in a State in proportion to its population. The NMC has fixed a ratio of 100 undergraduate medical seats to the population of every million.

If the new guidelines were to come into force, it would be a long time before the State could open any new medical college — government or private. Given that the State’s population is estimated to be 6.73 crore, it can have 6,700 undergraduate medical seats as per these norms. However, the State already has 11,745 medical seats.

This will essentially mean a freeze on the addition of new medical seats in most south Indian States, even as many north Indian States — where the ratio of medical seats to population is far lower than what has been prescribed — will get to add most of the new medical colleges in the near future. Apart from Karnataka, Tamil Nadu has also voiced its objections to the new guidelines.

“This order will adversely impact healthcare in South India, including Karnataka. This is an arbitrary decision taken by the Union government without consulting any stakeholders. Therefore, we are not going to abide by these guidelines and we will file our objections soon. We are committed to our ‘One district, one medical college’ policy and we will start new government medical colleges in every district soon,” said Medical Education Minister Sharan Prakash Patil.

However, the NMC has defended its decision. “Various courts had made observations on the crowding of medical colleges in certain regions. For example, recently, in the case of K. Vasudevan vs. State of Tamil Nadu and others, the Madurai Bench of Madras High Court cautioned the NMC against crowding of medical colleges…Taking these aspects into consideration, and with an objective of providing the right teaching environment to medical students and improving the overall quality of education, the provision of limiting undergraduate seats in each State to 100 per million population has been included in the recently notified Minimum Standards Requirements guidelines 2023,” the NMC said in a statement recently.

“It is expected that this will reduce regional disparities in the availability of healthcare professionals and will go a long way in ensuring effective quality of education. With this ratio, there will still be potential for the addition of about 40,000 MBBS seats in the country if the medical colleges are evenly distributed,” it said, defending the move.