NEW DELHI: The hope of about 20 per cent more MBBS seats on offer has prompted nearly 2 lakh more students to register for National Entrance Cum eligibility Test, the national-level competitive examination to get into medical colleges, this year.
Over 15 lakh students have registered for NEET, to be held in May 2019. In 2018, about 13 lakh students had taken the test.In 2019, for the first time, National Testing Agency-a specialised body that has been constituted to organise various competitive examinations-will conduct NEET.
Officials in the medical education division of the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said that the surge in number of applicants could be due to the fact that the number of operational medical colleges is going up in 2019.
In 2018, there were around 60,000 MBBS seats-about 30,000 each in government and private colleges-on offer and this is likely to go up to 70-72,000 in 2019.“Various states, like Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra and some southern and north-eastern states, will see about 12-14 more new colleges getting operational from the next academic session, which means there would be more options for MBBS aspirants,” an official said.
A member of the Board of Governors that had replaced the medical education regulator Medical Council of India recently, said that while the exact number of MBBS seats would be known only in a few months from now, the government’s signal was to “recognise” more and more medical colleges through the public-private partnership model.
“In most states the new medical colleges are coming up though special arrangements between state governments and private sector which means that infrastructure is provided by the states but the teaching and operations of medical colleges is taken care of by the private players,” he said.“In some cases, the states are offering various incentives to private players to start medical colleges in rural and semi-urban areas,” he added.