Tumkur, Chickballapur among 6 districts to get medical colleges

The State Budget spells good news for medical seat aspirants.

Taking forward the government’s “one medical college for every district” policy, new medical colleges will be set up in six districts — Tumkur, Chitradurga, Chickballapur, Bagalkot, Haveri and Yadgir.

These will be established in collaboration with the Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences.

Minister of State for Medical Education Sharan Prakash R. Patil said that the target was to open these colleges by the academic year2015-16.

With this new announcement, the total number of government medical colleges in the State will reach 22.

The government had announced six new medical colleges in Gulbarga, Koppal, Chamarajanagar, Karwar, Madikeri and Gadag last year. Though the government wants to open these for admissions for the year 2014-15 and add 900 government seats to the total number of seats, they are yet to get the approval of the Medical Council of India.

Dr. Sharan Prakash Patil said that the government would seek the permission of the MCI to have 150 seats in each of the new colleges.

Upgrade

The budget also announced upgrading the Vijayanagar Institute of Medical Sciences (VIMS), Bellary, and the Karnataka Institute of Medical Sciences (KIMS), Hubli, at a cost of Rs. 150 crore each under the Centrally-sponsored scheme “Pradhan Mantri Swasthya Suraksha Yojana”.

The Union government will provide Rs. 120 crore as its share for this.