Medical Council of India (MCI) may cancel 400 MBBS seats in Andhra Pradesh if the state government fails to put in place all the required facilities in government medical colleges by April 2014.

Earlier in April MCI had granted 400 MBBS seats to Andhra Pradesh. The state government had promised to provide the facilities by December 2013 but had failed to meet the deadline in time, which has become a cause of concern for aspiring medical students in the state.

With MCI officials finding deficiencies in providing facilities and lack of proper infrastructure for extra 400 MBBS seats granted this year, the state may lose these extra MBBS seats if the government does not act soon to improve the facilities immediately.

AP government’s negligence and inordinate delay to improve facilities in the government medical colleges and teaching hospitals in the state has become a matter of concern for MBBS students since long. Despite the central government’s share of fund of Rs.80 crores already released, the state government has not released its share for improving the facilities in the colleges.

There is a huge demand for seats in medical education in Andhra Pradesh. It is keeping this in view MCI had granted 400 extra MBBS seats to the state on the condition that the state government should put in place all the extra requirements for the additional seats in the respective government medical colleges. The then chief secretary Minnie Mathew had also given a written undertaking in April that all deficiencies will be rectified by December.

With no initiative from the state government in improving the facilities, the MCI may withdraw the additional seats by April. Currently, there are 15 government medical colleges offering 2,400 MBBS seats. The intake was increased by 400 last year.

The districts which have secured extra government medical seats in the state during 2013 include Kakinada, Guntur, and Vijayawada in Andhra region, Warangal, Nizamabad and Hyderabad in Telangana and Kurnool and Tirupati in Rayalaseema region. For all the three regions MCI had granted 400 seats in the state.

According to reports, the MCI inspection teams have found problems with the classrooms, laboratories, seminar halls and hostels and discovered a faculty crunch in clinical and non-clinical departments. Medical education minister Kondru Murali, however, said, “Work is on to improve facilities. Notifications are being issued to fill vacant posts by March. We will get additional seats this year too.”