Karnataka Government has decided to increase the medical fees by ten fold for most of the post graduate and medical and dental courses from now onwards.

Students who were paying only Rs 1,000 in medical colleges for pre-clinical courses have to pay Rs 5,000 now. Those who paid Rs 1,000 for para clinical courses will have to cough up Rs 10,000. The fee for the clinical courses earlier was Rs 5,000, which has been hiked to Rs 50,000. There are four government medical colleges in the state located at Bangalore, Mysore, Bellary and Hubli.

In the state’s lone government dental college in Bangalore, the fee for para clinical dental course has been hiked to Rs 5,000 and clinical courses is Rs 50,000.

Another decision by the Cabinet is an increase in the intake of merit students for MBBS courses in the government colleges from the present 100 to 150 seats. In fact, this decision is subject to the approval of the Medical Council of India (MCI) which the State Government is quite confident on a positive outcome.

Pharmabiz had earlier reported that MCI team would be in the state on May 31 to clear five additional medical colleges and inspect the infrastructure facilities coming up in Bidar, Mandya, Hassan and Raichur. The fifth college at Shimoga will not be approved by MCI because the State Government submitted the application for clearance late.

The proposal to increase the seats had been on the anvil for some time following the demands from the various quarters to accommodate more number of merit students in the free seat category. “With this 200 more students can be admitted into the four government medical colleges at Bangalore, Bellary, Mysore and Hubli, which is from the current 400 seats to 600 seats,” stated sources.

Further, the Cabinet has also decided to sanction 29 additional seats to Yenopaya Medical College, Mangalore and 16 seats to KS Hegde Medical Academy, Mangalore. In addition, six more seats in the post-graduate category in each discipline have been approved in the MS Ramaiah Dental College in Bangalore.

Permission is also accorded to upgrade the infrastructure at the Sanjay Gandhi Research and Accident Relief Hospital and SDSTB Sanatorium. No details on the funds allocated for the same was disclosed.