Mar 17 2017 : The Times of India (Chennai)

State govt announces 174 more seats for postgraduate courses in medicine

Coimbatore: Team TOI





The Tamil Nadu government on Thursday announced that 174 more seats will be added to postgraduate courses in government medical colleges from the academic year 2017-18. The government is also likely to announce 165 more seats in a week, said secretary to the department of health, Dr J Radhakrishnan.

In his budget speech for the financial year 2017-18, finance minister D Jayakumar proposed to increase the number of seats in postgraduate medical courses from 1,188 to 1,362. “Out of the total 174 seats that will be added from the next academic year, 143 seats have been allotted based on the revised teacher-student ratio proposed in the Union budget,“ said Radhakrishnan. “The remaining 31 seats were allotted as a regular process every year.“

The Centre had revised the teacher student ratio for postgraduate medical courses to 3:1 this year. “A total of about 1,200 postgraduate seats were sanctioned to be allotted across the country . Of that, we managed to get 143 seats,“ said a senior official of the health department.“We are also expecting an additional 165 seats in a week or 10 days,“ he added.

The increase in the seats will be across 13 government medical colleges in the state. At present there are 21 government medical colleges, which is likely to become 22 once approvals are given to the Puduk kottai college. “Of the 21 colleges, 13 have postgraduate courses. The addition of seats is predominantly in clinical courses such as medicine, surgery , paediatrics and orthopaedics.

The increase in the number of seats will come out as a relief for MBBS students in the state, especially those from the rural and middle class strata. “This will be a motivation for many students who aspire to pursue postgraduate studies, but do not have the financial resources. Also, those students who aspire to join medicine will see this as a positive sign for their career,“ said the dean of Coimbatore Medical College and Hospital, Edwin Joe.