The Telangana state government is mulling on making ‘one year compulsory rural service’ for post graduate medical students. In view of medical PG counseling conducted on July 15-16, the state government is planning to introduce the condition of serving one year compulsory rural service for all students admitting in medical PG from this academic year.

To this effect, senior officials from Telangana medical and health department, health and family welfare department, Telangana Vidya Vidhana Parishad and officials from Telangana Medical Education department held a meeting to finalize the modalities of admission procedure for the medical PG students. According to sources in the healthcare department, during the admission process, the medical PG students will have to sign an undertaking accepting the condition of delivering one year compulsory rural medical service in the government hospitals.

As the state government had faced problems earlier with the Junior Doctors Association (JUDA) going on for regular strikes to abolish the condition of compulsory rural service by the medical students, this time the state government wants to come out with clear conditions to the students so that there is no ambiguity.

Earlier in 2014, the JUDA had gone on an indefinite strike for almost 4 months affecting all the regular and emergency medical services across all government hospitals in the state. It was only with the intervention of the High Court and government’s assurance that all the conditions of the JUDA will be met except exclusion of compulsory rural service.

At present there are about 680 Post Graduate Medical seats in Telangana. With the counseling schedule beginning from 15 and 16 of this month, the state government is looking to appoint these PG doctors to all affiliated hospitals attached to government medical colleges. There are about 560 PG seats to be filled in hospitals attached to teaching colleges under medical education department, while almost 120 seats are to be filled in district level hospitals being run by Vidhya Vidhana Parishad.

The state medical and health department is also designing a chart matrix for the appointment of these PG doctors according to their specialization. For filling up the specialists PG students, the health department is also preparing a list of vacant posts in the leading government general hospitals attached to Gandhi Medical College, Osmania Medical College in Hyderabad and Kakatiya Medical College in Warangal districts. In all government is expected to fill 15 PG posts each in general medicine, general surgeon, anaesthesia and paediatric departments in these medical colleges. In Warangal Medical College the government has allocated 12 PG medical seats.