Ma Su holds meeting with pvt medical colleges on seat allocation

CHENNAI: Health Minister Ma Subramanian held a meeting regarding the allotment of seats for postgraduate and undergraduate medical courses in government and private medical colleges for the academic year 2023-24.

The discussion was held on sharing the seats between government and private hospitals for postgraduate medical and dental courses too. He said that it is a regular meeting to discuss the allocation of seats for the admission of students before counselling.

He said that Tamil Nadu has 18 self-financed colleges for postgraduate medical courses, 16 self-financed colleges for postgraduate dental courses, 19 self-financed colleges for MBBS and 20 self-financed colleges for BDS. At least 407 seats were allocated to the self-financed colleges in the academic year 2022-23 for PG medical course and 385 seats for PG dental course.

He said that there are 139 government seats and 157 private seats. Overall, 1,739 seats have been reserved for government and 1,311 seats for private colleges for MBBS degree course. As many as 1,410 seats have been reserved for government and 540 seats for private colleges for BDS degree. If was decided in the meeting that the seat allocation will continue as same this year.

He added that a demand was made by private colleges that the counselling should be started immediately after the results of the NEET.

Responding to the same, he said that State governments can hold counseling only after the Union government's counselling of 15 percent quota, which was delayed last year by the Union government. We think it will not happen this year.

The minister said that he, along with health secretary, is going to meet the Union Health Minister and the Minister of AYUSH in the first week of June to discuss the needs of the medical infrastructure in Tamil Nadu.

As soon as the result of NEET comes out, we are going to request that the Union Government should complete 15 per cent counselling immediately, so that the respective State governments can conduct counselling. The Union Government has said that the NEET results are expected to come out in the first week of June and the Union Government will conduct the counselling without any delay, he added.