The Medical Council of India (MCI) has cleared two of the six proposed medical colleges in Karnataka.

The MCI executive committee has approved the starting of colleges located at Mandya and Belgaum, and the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare have notified the decision to start these colleges in 2006-07. The pending ones to be cleared are located at Bidar, Shimoga, Raichur and Hassan.

Meanwhile, the MCI recommendations in favour of two private colleges - the MVJ College of Medical Sciences in Bangalore and the Basaveshwara Medical College in Chitradurga, have also been cleared by the Ministry, it is learnt. With this, the number of MBBS seats in the State will increase by 350. Of these 275 seats will go to the Common Entrance Test (CET) and 75 to Consortium of Medical, Engineering and Dental Colleges of Karnataka (COMED) and management quotas of the two private colleges.

The Belgaum and Mandya districts will have one medical college each with an intake of 100 seats for each institution. All the seats will go to the CET cell and are to be filled with the students with CET ranks.

With the clearance of the MVJ Medical College, Bangalore and the Basaveshwara Medical colleges in Chitradurga the intake will be 100 seats ad 50 seats respectively.

These four colleges together will contribute 350 medical seats to the State. According to Karnataka minister for medical education, Dr VS Acharaya, the MCI Committee had recommended approval for all the four colleges after its teams conducted inspections.

The medical education minister also informed that the with the State Government awaiting the MCI approval for its new medical colleges in Bidar, Belgaum, Mandya, Raichur, Hassan and Shimoga, it has already selected around 45 postgraduate and 60 graduate doctors for starting the first year course in the six colleges.