U.P. plans biggest increase in PG medical seats from 2024 session
Focus will be on KGMU and SGPGIMS in Lucknow, GIMS in Greater Noida and GSVM Medical College in Kanpur
After giving a push to healthcare facility, Uttar Pradesh now plans its biggest ever leap in higher medical education by adding over 800 PG medical seats across government medical institutions in the state from 2024 session onwards.
In it, the focus will be on King George’s Medical University (KGMU) and Sanjay Gandhi Post Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences (SGPGIMS) in Lucknow, Government Institute of Medical Sciences (GIMS) in Greater Noida, Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi Memorial (GSVM) Medical College in Kanpur and medical colleges in peripheral districts.
“Preparations have been completed for adding 763 seats and work is being done on more. This will be the biggest ever jump in PG medical seats in the state from our present over 1700 seats across government medical colleges,” said Alok Kumar, principal secretary, medical education, Uttar Pradesh.
To ensure the proposal is not rejected by the National Medical Council (NMC), the medical education department has prepared the list of seats that can be added to each of the 35 medical institutions along with the shortcoming identified by principals/heads of the institutions.
“We ensured those shortcomings are rectified first. Once the hurdles were cleared, the proposal was accepted from the colleges. We are sure we are going to add almost all the seats we propose to,” Kumar added.
Till 2015, there were 933 PG medical seats in state after which over 450 were added taking the figure over 1400. Gradually, each year more seats were added and at present over 1700 are there in different specialities. Apart from the 763 seats that are already to be proposed by the state government, work on adding another 150 is going on.
“We are ensuring no proposal even for a single seat goes to the NMC without proper evaluation and fulfilling standard criteria,” said the principal secretary. The key specialities focused this year include obstetrics and gynaecology, otolaryngology, orthopaedic surgery, general surgery, sports medicine among surgical branches besides radiology and pathology.
To increase speciality care for patients in medical colleges in peripheral districts, the medical education department has chosen to propose several seats in autonomous state medical colleges (ASMCs) also that were opened in the past 5 years.
For the Rajashri Dashrath ASMC in Ayodhya, 24 seats will be proposed, including four in pathology, two in microbiology, four in anatomy and five in biochemistry. Similarly, in the government medical college, Basti, 48 seats will be proposed. They include five in radiodiagnosis and three in ophthalmology.
If Uttar Pradesh succeeds in getting PG seats increased, it will be on number two position in the country in terms of PG seats after Maharashtra that has 2,488 PG seats while Delhi has 1,895 and Tamil Nadu has 1,836 seats currently. Each state gets some seats increased every year.
