SFI demands more medical colleges

Mou Chakraborty
Kolkata, June 12, 2007
The Students Federation of India (SFI) on Tuesday demanded that the state should have at least 8 more medical colleges to meet increasing demand and pressed for a speedy set up of the colleges.
The state has 9 medical colleges and now the SFI wants the number to increase to 17 in the next five years. The state government has proposed to build a medical college at Kalyani, Malda and Cooch Behar. “The demand for studying medicine is huge and the government would need at least 5 more medical colleges. To do that, the state needs private initiative and though the government has welcomed such deals, somehow things are not materialising,” said Sudip Sengupta, state president of SFI. “We want the state to ensure that things go in a positive direction.”
Till date, there have been proposals of floating private medical colleges at Haldia by the Eyecare Group; B.P. Poddar Hospital too has plans to come up with a private medical college soon. The JIS Group, which already has private engineering colleges, is aiming to open one at Kamarhati. The TB Hospital beside Jadavpur University has been taken over by the KPC Group to be converted into a private medical college, but the project is yet to take off. The Techno India Group too wants to open a private engineering college at Rajarhat.
But the colleges are taking time to take off mainly because of the rules set by the Medical Council of India for affiliation. In order to have a medical college, there should be a 100-bed hospital running for at least 3 years. In addition to this, the campus should be spread over at least 25 acres. Combining the equipment and other resources, at least Rs 100 crore is required to float a private medical college. “It is a long-term investment as opposed to private engineering colleges, where the invested money can be recovered by the very first year. So not everyone is interested,” said Sengupta.
While there are 17,000 seats in private engineering colleges, the state offers only 1,150 seats for students willing to study medicine. “The demand here is very high. That is the reason why medical colleges from Russia and China are coming to Kolkata to rope in prospective students. The students are not only forced to pay high tuition fess but also have to shell out Rs 5 to 10 lakh to the facilitators as passage money,” said Sengupta.
The private engineering colleges will start taking in students under the management quota from the current academic session. The SFI has also demanded that the state bring transparency in admission procedure, so that students getting admitted under this quota do not need to give more than US$4,000 to the colleges. In order to ensure that, needy but meritorious students fill up the 10 per cent free seats quota, the SFI will have complaint cells in every district.
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