Now, a dental college for CM's borough

The Uttar Pradesh government will set up a dental college in Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav's village, Sefai.

The dental college will be set up within the campus of the Rs 100-crore Rural Institute of Medical Science and Research, currently under construction.

The proposal for the dental college was approved by the state Cabinet which met here today. The state government has already pumped in over Rs 100 crore in a private, post-graduate college, Chowdhary Charan Singh Degree College, located at Hevra near Sefai. Sefai has recently been upgraded to a sub divisional headquarters.

The 100-seat dental college will be the second government dental college in the state. Officials, justifying the need for a state-run dental college in the chief minister's native village, said there was only one state-run dental college in Uttar Pradesh, located in Lucknow with 70 seats.

The government dental college at Sefai will incur non-recurring cost of Rs 88 crore (including land and construction costs) and recurring cost of Rs 12 crore (including salaries and maintenance expenses).

There are 21 private dental colleges is the state which charge over Rs 2 lakh per annum. The state-run college, in contrast, charges only Rs 18,000 per annum, the officials point out.

As per standards, there should be one dental surgeon for a population of 2,000. Currently, there was one dentist for every 72,284 people, officials said.

Moreover, sources said, all 21 private dental colleges were located at Ghaziabad and other big cities like Lucknow and Kanpur and none to serve the local population under Agra division.

The proposed college at Sefai will cater to the need of people from Etawah, Farrukhabad, Mainpuri, Kanauj and other adjoining districts, officials said.

As per the standards laid down by the Murdaliar Committee, there should be one doctor for a population of 3,500. There was shortage of 13,571 doctors in Uttar Pradesh as against the requirement of 48,571 doctors, only 35,000 were available.

With the revision of minimum standards by the Central Planning Commission for the Eleventh Five Year Plan, the shortage of doctors in UP likely to increase to over 125,000 doctors. The new standard lays down that there should be one doctor against the population of 1,350.