New Delhi: India's medical education expansion has moved from one AIIMS to 23 and from 387 medical colleges to 863, Union Health Minister J P Nadda said on Thursday, adding that the government is working towards 75,000 additional undergraduate and postgraduate medical seats by 2029.
Speaking at a health sector summit in the capital, Nadda said undergraduate medical seats had risen from 51,000 to 1.43 lakh and postgraduate seats from 31,000 to 86,000.
"Following the direction of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, we are on track to meet the target of adding 75,000 more undergraduate and postgraduate medical seats by 2029," he said. He said 45,000 seats had been added in the past two years, and that the aim was not only more seats but better quality medical education.
On the money behind the PG expansion, he said the Centre had decided to provide ₹1.5 crore per seat for 10,000 postgraduate medical seats. "₹15,000 crore has been allocated only for these PG seats," he said.
Primary healthcare has expanded alongside. Nadda said 1.86 lakh Ayushman Arogya Mandirs have been set up across the country, and argued that health information systems are central to making care efficient, accessible, modern and digitised.
The expansion sits alongside a live legal question. On October 27, a Supreme Court bench of Justices P S Narasimha and Alok Aradhe said it was inclined to lay down constitutional guiding principles on compulsory rural service by medical graduates, calling the absence of a national policy a deficit. Justice Narasimha said the right to health is a fundamental right and an obligation of the state, and that states would frame rules in consultation with the commission. The court was hearing a challenge to Karnataka's compulsory rural service requirement, including a 2023 notification extending one year of public rural service to students on private seats.
Health is a state subject under Entry 6 of the State List, and several states run their own service bonds. The Centre told the court it preferred a consultative process.
Nadda did not give a year-wise breakdown of where the remaining seats will be added or how many of the new colleges are in rural districts.