The Medical Council of India (MCI) has agreed to sanction 400 more medical seats in four government and two private medical colleges in Andhra Pradesh for the current academic year 2013-14.

After constant persuasion by the state government during the past one year, the MCI has agreed to sanction 50 medical seats each in four government medical colleges of Osmania Medical College, Gandhi Medical College from Telangana region and Sri Venkateshwara Medical College (SVMC), Rangaraya Medical College from the Andhra region.

In the private sector, the MCI has sanctioned 150 MBBS seats to Kamineni Hospital’s new Medical College in Hyderabad. Another 50 seats have been accorded to SVS Medical College in Mahabubnagar district.

Earlier last year MCI had denied granting seats to these colleges citing inadequate infrastructure and shortage of man power to meet the requirements of the increased seats. Even this year the MCI has granted these seats only after getting the government’s assurance that the entire required infrastructure will be in place as early as possible.

Already there are 1500 medical seats available in the state-run government medical colleges in the state and with the addition of the newly sanctioned seats the number is now increased to 1700 seats. The Osmanaia Medical College (OMC) which is one of the oldest medical institutes has the maximum number of 250 seats among all the colleges in the state. With the addition of 50 MBBs seats, OMC’s tally has increased from 200 to 250 seats at present.

The Gandhi Medical College which had 150 MBBS seats earlier will now have 200 seats with the new addition. The Sri Venkateswara Medical College in Tirupati and Rangaraya Medical College in Kakinada too will have 200 seats each from this academic year.

With the increase of 400 new MBBS seats, Andhra Pradesh will now have its seat share enhanced from 5500 to 5900 in all the private and government colleges in the state. The state government is also expecting another 200 to 350 seats increased in the coming days as it has already put a proposal to increase seats in Kakatiya Medical College in Warangal in Telangana region and Guntur Medical College in Andhra region.

“Our efforts to convince MCI have finally succeeded, the grant of additional 200 seats to the state government medical colleges is a very big achievement,” says K Vishnu Prasad, director of Medical Education, Andhra Pradesh.