The Indian Medical Association (IMA) has urged the Union Health Ministry to direct all government medical colleges to submit in time how many more post-graduate seats are required for the institutes.
In a letter to the Union Health Secretary C K Mishra, the IMA has said all "administrators in respective health services" should ensure that all government medical colleges submit their requirement of additional seats in time.
"It has come to the notice of IMA that for multiple reasons various government medical colleges are not submitting the requisite information about increase in number of seats applicable to their medical colleges.
"IMA feels that government should intervene and direct all colleges to avail this opportunity, fill up the requisite proforma and submit it to the Medical Council of India (MCI)," Dr K K Aggarwal, the national president of IMA, said in the letter.
The letter comes against the backdrop of the Centre announcing creation of additional 5,000 post-graduate (PG) seats in the country in the 2017-18 Budget to overcome shortage of doctors at secondary and tertiary levels.
Accordingly, the Union Health Ministry and the MCI had written to all government medical colleges to respond to increase in post-graduate seats.
At present, medical PG seat strength in the country is 18,000 in clinical subjects, not enough to match its teaching and research requirements.
In the letter, Aggarwal also said all "administrators in respective Health Services" should ensure that deans of all government medical colleges send the required information to MCI in time so that the benefit can go to "genuine meritorious and poor" students.
"In 2009, when the professor-student ratio was increased from 1:1 to 1:2, immediately 3,000 PG seats were increased. Unfortunately, when the same opportunity is now given with 1:3 ratio, the government sector is not responding the way they should," Aggarwal said.
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