Shimla: The Union Health Ministry has granted permission to Dr YS Parmar Medial College in Nahan to admit first batch of 100 MBBS students for the 2016-17 session.
An MCI team had inspected the College twice and the permission was granted on the basis of report submitted by the team, Union Health and Family Welfare minister JP Nadda said on Thursday.
However, the classes in other three colleges, including Jawaharlal Nehru College in Chamba, Dr S Radhakrishanan College in Hamirpur and ESI Medical College in Ner Chowk (Mandi) are unlikely to start from the current academic session as necessary faculty and requisite infrastructure were not in place.
The Infrastructure development work and recruitment of faculty is in progress in respect of Chamba College, Land clearance is awaited for Hamirpur Colleges while the Union Ministry of labour is yet to handover the infrastructure created for Ner Chowk College at a cost of about Rs 800 crore, even though the matter has been negotiated and settled between the state government and Union Labour Ministry.
The Chamba and Hamirpur colleges would have 100 seats each while the ESI College would be given 50 MBBS seats.
The two existing government medical colleges, the IGMC Shimla, started in 1966 and the Tanda medical College set up in 1996 also have 100 MBBS seats each and with all four colleges becoming functional, the total number of seats would increase to 550.
Himachal Pradesh Health minister Kaul Singh also confirmed that Nahan Medical College was allowed to go ahead with admissions for the first batch and the state government was making serious efforts to meet the requirements of the MCI to make other three colleges functional as soon as possible.
The Union government had given Rs 570 crore for building infrastructure for Nahan, Hamirpur and Chamba colleges and later released additional Rs 10 crore for Nahan College, he said.
An AIIMS is also coming up near Bilaspur and land had been identified for the mega project, Singh said.
