The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on Wednesday approved 75 new government medical colleges across India.The move is expected to increase the undergraduate medical seats by 15,700 MBBS/BDS seats, which would take the total number of undergraduate medical seats in the country to close to one lakh.

The colleges will come up in the next three years by 2021-22,under the phase III expansion plan of the ongoing centrally sponsored scheme. All the new government medical colleges will be set up in the under-served districts of the country that do not yet have any medical colleges. The government’s plan is to upgrade the existing district/referral hospitals and attach the medical colleges with each of them.

The Cabinet also sanctioned an expenditure of Rs 24,375 crore during the 15th Finance Commission period (2021-22) to meet the target and to increase the availability of healthcare infrastructure and manpower.

The environment minister Prakash Javadekar explained that establishment of new medical colleges would lead to an increase in theavailability of qualified health professionals, improve tertiary care in government sector, utilise existing infrastructure of districts hospitals and promote affordable medical education in the country.

“The new medical colleges will be set up in areas with at least 200 bedded district hospitals. However, preference will be given to the aspirational districts and district hospitals having 300 beds,” the minister informed.

With continued focus on creation of health care infrastructure, the government had earlier approved to establish 58 new medical colleges attached with existing district/referral hospitals under Phase-I, and24 colleges under Phase-II. Of these, 39 medical colleges under Phase-I have already started functioning, while the remaining 19 would be made functional by2020-21.

Under Phase-II, 18 new medical colleges have been approved.