Government medical colleges with bed capacity of 1,000 can now admit up to 250 students for the MBBS course from the academic session 2011-12, health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad told The Hindu.

“But the raise in the ceiling is not automatic; it is subject to verification of infrastructure and human resource,” said Azad. This move by the central government is to increase the number of doctors qualifying every year. With this decision, 37 government medical colleges across the country will go up by 3,700.

However, Azad said that he is awaiting response of the corporate sector to its proposals of corporate houses opening medical colleges. If corporate houses and big hospitals open up medical colleges, the number of seats would go up.

To meet the shortage of teachers in medical colleges, Azad said that he would request the state governments to increase the age of retirement of the faculty in medical colleges. The retirement age in the central government institutions is 65 years but in most of the states it is 58 years. Kerala has the lowest retirement age at 55 years.

The ministry has relaxed the norms for the medical colleges to apply for postgraduate seats. The colleges can now apply for these seats after three years of existence as against the earlier five year period. The ministry also wants to increase 10,000 postgraduate seats in phases out of which 4,000 have already been added.