100 seats added to two medical colleges

LUCKNOW: The number of undergraduate medical seats in the state increased by 100 after Medical Council of India gave conditional approval to a proposal to this effect recently. As of now, there are 1,034 medical seats in the state and the addition would take the total to 1,134.
The seats have been added to Motilal Nehru Medical College Allahabad and Lala Lajpat Rai Medical College, Meerut.The two colleges have 100 seats each and have 50 additional seats each. The medical education directorate had been pursuing a proposal for long. They are now hoping for more seats in Rani Lakshmi Bai Medical College of Jhansi and Baba Raghav Das Medical College, Gorakhpur too.
Director general medical education, Dr KK Gupta said admissions against these seats will be made during the second counseling. "All these medical colleges are more than 10 years old and eligible for additional seats and considering the response to colleges in Allahabad and Meerut, we hope the proposal for the other colleges will also be cleared," he said.
MCI has made the state government submit an undertaking in which the Medical Education department pledge implementation of standards of teaching and patient care. The DG informed that the document has been submitted. Officials at the number of medical seats in the state are far less than required. As per Indian Public Health Standards (IPHS), there should be a medical college set up over a population of every 50 lakh.
Considering UP's present population, the state should have 40 medical colleges. The rule of planning suggests thinking in prospective terms. Keeping the future needs in mind, experts state that UP should have 50 medical colleges, but there are just 25 medical colleges in UP listed by the Medical Council of India. Of these, only 11 are run by the state government while rest are in the private sector and managed by trusts.