Talks yet to begin with private medical colleges

While there was no indication from the government of when negotiations with private medical colleges would begin for arriving at the number of MBBS seats to be allotted for government quota this year, many of the colleges said on Friday that they had already completed the process of filling the management quota seats.

Senior officials told The Hindu that the negotiations with self-financing colleges have to be initiated by the Health Minister, who was yet to be appointed. For the last two years, the negotiations, both formal and informal, ran into at least two or three rounds and took about a month to arrive at a consensus, they said.

Last year, the government, after several rounds of talks, was able to improve the number of government quota MBBS seats by just four from 261 to 265.

This was despite the fact that there are seven self-financing colleges in the Union Territory.

Management members of private colleges, who spoke to The Hindu on condition of anonymity, said they might not be in a position to part with higher number of seats from last year.

“Admission letters have already been provided to students. In case we have to increase the government quota seats, we would have to cancel such admissions. That is not a possibility,” said the head of a private medical college.

MCI permission

Adding to this was the fact that Indira Gandhi Medical College and Research Institute, which has about 150 seats, was yet to receive permission from the MCI to admit its second batch of students for the coming academic year.

“Even if the college gets the nod, we would have lesser seats through CENTAC as 30 per cent of the 150 seats would go to the NRI and Central government quotas. Last year, we were exempted from contributing to the Central pool as it was the first year,” said an official.

In seat terms, this meant that the candidates would have 45 lesser seats in the only government medical college in Puducherry.