The Dental Council of India (DCI) today demanded a moratorium on starting new private colleges while citing "ample number" of dentists in society and the acute shortage of trained faculty in existing colleges as the main reasons.
Dr Dibyendu Mazumdar, the president of the statutory body which is responsible for regulating dental education and also the profession, said that the combined intake of students across 302 colleges has reached 25,000.
"There should be a moratorium on starting new dental colleges. The DCI does not want to sanction new dental colleges anywhere in the country," Dr Mazumdar told PTI.
He was speaking on the sidelines of the 2nd international conference on the theme of evidence-based education system (EBES) being organised by the Sumandeep Vidyapeeth here.
"The current dentist-to-population ratio is well above the requirement," Dr Mazumdar said, adding that he had already written to all chief ministers requesting them not to approve any new private dental college in their respective state.
"Another reason for the moratorium on opening of new dental colleges is due to acute shortage of qualified teaching faculty," he said.
As per the procedure, a university concerned has to grant an NOC to the management of private college which then has to secure nod of the state government and finally send the proposal to Centre.
"The strict rules have resulted in rejection of 90 per cent proposals to open new dental colleges in the country. As many as 85 colleges were not given recognition to run a dental college because of stringent norms. Only 7 were considered and given approval during this year so far," he said.
"Even if we give permission, the dental college should necessarily be attached to a medical college because as many as eight out of the 17 subjects are common for both dental and medical students," the DCI president said.
Dr Mazumdar said that the DCI recognised only those dental institutes which have other departments such as ENT, eye, orthopaedic and others to ensure sufficient inflow of clinical material and patients to the college concerned.
He said that private colleges were not on par with their government counterparts in terms of training and standard of education.
