The state will get an additional 172 PG medical seats in which the Medical Council of India (MCI) has given the nod for admitting students from the 2010-11 academic year.
This will be a bonanza for the MBBS students of the state who will now get more opportunity to do postgraduate courses, paying government fees. The additional seats had been okayed following the Central Government’s decision to sanction 3,791 more postgraduate seats in the medical colleges across the country.
This will push up the number of PG seats from the current 13,503 to 17,294 in the new academic session across 22 states and Union Territories. Of these, 3,085 seats have been added to government colleges and 706 to private ones. However, the biggest beneficiary of the Centre’s decision is Andhra Pradesh. The state has bagged the most number of seats with 611, followed by Maharashtra with 476. Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, New Delhi, Punjab and Gujarat also bagged more than 200 seats each.
In Kerala, the biggest beneficiary is Thiruvananthapuram Medical College which got 84 more PG seats. Kozhikode Medical College got 27 more seats, Alappuzha eight, Kottayam 27 and Thrissur 25 more seats. The Academy of Medical Sciences, Pariyaram, Kannur, had also been sanctioned a lone PG seat in MD General Medicine. Meanwhile, the MCI has refused to increase the number of seats to the courses in MCh Plastic Surgery, MCh Surgical Gastroenterology and MCh Thoracic Surgery in Thiruvananthapuram Medical College owing to shortage of faculties.
