400 Seats in Medical Colleges of West Bengal Restored by the Medical Council of India

The Medical Council of India (MCI) has restored 40% of the admission seats it had cut during inspection of state-run government colleges and two private colleges in West Bengal. Now, only 1,755 seats in total will be on offer, which before the slash were 2,400.

The decision of restoring 400 seats in Bengal came at the end of two-day meeting that held in Delhi on 14 June, in which MCI's executive committee approved this decision in response to chief secretary Sanjay Mitra's written undertaking to meet the council's infrastructure criteria within three months.

The distribution of restored seats been cleared in four medical colleges--2 government and 2 private includes 50 seats in Burdwan Medical College, 100 in Murshidabad Medical College, 150 at IQ-City Medical College and 100 in ICARE Institute of Medical Sciences, Haldia. Besides, the executive committee also had approved the restoration of a numerous seats in 381 colleges across the country.

Some 4,433 students this year qualified the West Bengal Joint Entrance Examination entrance (Medical) exam in which 63,330 students appeared. The qualified students are eligible for counseling.

This academic session will see no further scope of sanctioning of more seats since first round of counseling has to be completed by June 25 as ordered by Supreme Court and hence MCI will not be able to manage further inspection of colleges in such less time, says another executive committee member.

The additional seats added by the medical college were earlier slashed in the past 2 years as those colleges did not comply with a development of infrastructure as directed by MCI.