Sessions of new med colleges only in 2021

The Centre approved four new medical colleges this year with about 150 MBBS seats each for four districts -Ariyalur, Cuddalore, Kallakurichi and Kancheepuram. Tamil Nadu received the nod for nine medical colleges in districts, including Tiruvallur, Dindigul, Namakkal, Ramanathapuram, Virudhunagar, The Nilgiris, Tirupur, Krishnagiri and Nagapattinam in 2019.

There were at least 3,400 MBBS seats in a total of 26 government medical colleges and 3,750 MBBS seats in private medical colleges in Tamil Nadu. The four new medical colleges would add 600 more MBBS seats to the state once the executive committee provides the approval. Adding up all the MBBS seats, there will be more than 9,100 medical seats in Tamil Nadu.

This would make the state having the highest number of medical seats and highest number of government medical colleges.

Currently, the fund allocation has been made for six medical colleges that were announced last year and the construction of the buildings is to start soon.

Senior officials from the state health department say that despite the announcement, the academic session will start only from 2021 as the authorities need at least a year to ensure complete functioning of the government medical college.