Andhra Pradesh government has tightened the norms for setting up of new Dental colleges and had rejected 55 applications for want of attached hospital as mandated by Dental Council of India (DCI).

Except for one college, all the 55 applications seeking permission for setting up of new dental colleges for the year 2013-14 have been rejected by the government as they have no plan to set up attached hospitals.

At present there are 14 dental colleges across the state, of which 13 are run by the private managements and one is run by the state government.

The move of the government came in the wake of recent allegations by students and parents that the college managements are not providing proper teaching infrastructure facilities in the dental colleges. Among all applied only one college promoted by the Malla Reddy group is able to get the essentiality certificate to set up the college as they already have a medical college attached hospital.

The college managements of all the 55 private institutes are now alleging foul play over tightening norms by the state government at the last minute. They said that as per the norms prescribed by the DCI a dental college can be allowed only if it is attached to a medical college situated within a radius of 10 kilometres. While the medical education department officials say that as per the latest DCI norms, an attached hospital is a must for approving a dental college.

During the past few months the state government is seriously concerned with the quality of education imparted in the private engineering and medical colleges. In view of this, the state government’s move is intended to check sub-standard dental colleges and ill-equipped hospitals mushrooming across the country. Most private dental and nursing colleges in the state do not have their own hospitals.

With state government’s objection to give permission, the managements are now arguing that they have already spent about Rs.10 Crore each to purchase land, construct college buildings, provide infrastructure and hire teachers. They said that denying approvals to them at his stage is unfair. The managements have submitted representations to minister for medical education Kondru Murali and principal secretary Ratna Kishore.