After the Medical Council of India (MCI) refusing to increase the seats in postgraduate courses, including the doctor of medicine (MD) and master of surgery (MS) courses, the local Government Medical College and Rajindra Hospital is now eyeing an increase in the seats in the Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) course from the coming academic session.
Confident of getting the additional seats this time, the management sent the relevant documents to the MCI authorities last week. The college has proposed 50 more seats in addition to the existing 150.
Though the authorities intended to seek an increase of 100 seats, the serious anomalies found during the MCI's recent report made them cut their demand to half.
Over the past few years, the college authorities have faced disappointment on various occasions as despite repeated proposals, they have not been given approval to increase the seats in the MBBS owing to various reasons.
Now, Baba Farid University of Health Sciences, Faridkot, has given the go-ahead to the proposal of the medical college after conducting inspections and asked the college authorities to move its case to the MCI, which will visit the college before taking a decision.
The college authorities had to face embarrassment after the MCI's Postgraduate Medical Education Committee, in its recent report, refused to give nod to increasing the seats in the MD and MS courses.
{{/usCountry}}The college authorities had to face embarrassment after the MCI's Postgraduate Medical Education Committee, in its recent report, refused to give nod to increasing the seats in the MD and MS courses.
{{/usCountry}}The college had proposed 72 more seats in addition to the existing 133 seats in 16 departments.
Besides mentioning about the serious anomalies in various departments, the MCI reported an acute shortage of faculty and experts and poor academic and research atmosphere in the college owing to ill-equipped libraries and laboratories and a lack of basic infrastructure in several departments. Apart from the lack of professionalism, the report also mentioned out-of-the-way promotions given to professors of different departments.
College principal Dr KD Singh confirmed that they had completed all formalities and were waiting for the MCI's visit in the near future.
"The MCI's guidelines for the increase in seats in MBBS are not that strict as for the MD and MS courses. We meet the norms for having adequate facility when it comes to MBBS course, while the other anomalies mentioned by the MCI during its recent visit will be rectified before the inspection," Singh said.