MBBS seats lying vacant in AIIMS Patna and Raipur campuses

The country's most prestigious medical institution, All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), has received dull response from the students this year.

According to the reports, around 44 MBBS seats are lying vacant at AIIMS Patna and Raipur campuses. AIIMS' nodal officer said that, even after 4 consecutive rounds of counselling sessions for allotment of MBBS seats at AIIMS institutions across the country, around 44 MBBS seats are lying vacant.

A senior official said that, "Commonly, counselling would be held for the students whose number are triple the seats are available for admission. But this year, we called all the candidates who passed the entrance examination for counselling session. Still, seats are lying vacant."

The main reason for students not to take seats in these institutions is poor infrastructure, lack of faculty members, lack of facilities, clinical exposure, hospital facility and hostel facility.

According to the students, these are the newly established institutions, they don't have basic infrastructure facilities. Most of the students said that they would prefer the seats in regional medical colleges which have decades of history when compared to the new institutions.

Union health minister Harsh Vardhan said, "It is sad that seats are going vacant but I will have to check the reasons before commenting. We should not compare a new institution to the one existing for over six decades."

Central government has established six new AIIMS institutions in Patna, Jodhpur, Bhopal, Bhubaneswar, Rishikesh and Raipur under the Pradhan Mantri Swasthya Suraksha Yojana (PMSSY). [Stop going abroad, serve for the country: Vardhan asks AIIMS students]

As per the reports, when these institutions initially opened, the intake of the MBBS seats was 50 per college. But, in 2013, central government has decided to increase the intake of all these institutions.