58K MBBS seats for SC, ST, OBC students in the last 10 years: PM Modi

Taking all the three categories (SC / SC / OBC communities) together, there has been a 127% rise in the MBBS seats for students belonging to the three reserved categories.

New Delhi: Amidst the ongoing political debate on caste census, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday said his government allocated 58,000 MBBS seats for students from SC / SC / OBC communities in the last ten years.

Responding to a debate on the Motion of Thanks in the Lok Sabha, Modi said before 2014 there were 25,500 MBBS seats for students coming from these poor and backward communities, but the numbers had now been raised substantially.

The number of seats reserved for scheduled caste communities rose from 7,700 before 2014 to 17,000 now while the corresponding rise for scheduled tribe students was around 9,000 now from 3800 a decade ago.

For students from other backward classes, the number of undergraduate medical seats rose from 14,000 before 2014 to 32,000 now.

Taking all the three categories together, there has been a 127% rise in the MBBS seats for students belonging to the three reserved categories.

"Our Government has worked to create maximum opportunities for people from SC, ST and OBC Communities. Our commitment to the Constitution motivates us to make strong and pro-people decisions,” Modi said. “And this has been done without creating any tension in the society.”

The Prime Minister said there were only 387 medical colleges before 2014, but the number went up to 780 now. There is an increase of 130% in MBBS seats from 51,348 before 2014 to 1,18,137 now.

Presenting the Union Budget on Saturday, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said the government planned to further enhance the medical seats by another 10,000 this year and would add another 75,000 medical seats in the next five years.

She, however, didn’t clarify whether the increase will be in the undergraduate or postgraduate courses.

Ironically, the Prime Minister’s reply comes on a day when the Union Health Ministry informed the Parliament about a large number of vacancies in faculty positions in 21 out of 23 AIIMS including the biggest one in Delhi. On the remaining two AIIMS, the work has just started.

Out of 1,235 sanctioned faculty posts at AIIMS Delhi, nearly one-third - 425 to be exact - are vacant. In the first batch of six fully operation AIIMS at Bhopal, Bhubaneswar, Raipur, Jodhpur, Risikesh and Patna approved two decades ago with each having over 300 sanctioned faculty posts, the number of vacancies range from 141 at AIIMS Rishikesh to 73 at AIIMS Bhopal.

Similarly a large number of vacancies in the faculty and non-faculty positions are there in all other AIIMS, none of which are fully operational, according to a written reply given by Union Health Minister J P Nadda to the Rajya Sabha.