Odisha chief minister Naveen Patnaik on Sunday urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to allow medical students returning from Ukraine to pursue their medical education in India. Naveen sought Modi’s intervention with the National Medical Commission to facilitate this.

In a letter to Modi, which was released to the media on Sunday evening, Naveen said, “In view of the situation in Ukraine, large number of medical students from Odisha and other parts of India had to return back home. The disruption in their studies is likely to continue until cessation of the hostilities and restoration of normalcy in Ukraine.”

Citing that the unprecedented crisis has the potential of disrupting careers of several thousands of students, Naveen said: “I would, therefore, request for your urgent intervention with the National Medical Commission and the ministries concerned to enable and facilitate continuation of their studies in the medical colleges in India from the stage from which their studies in Ukraine have been disrupted on account of the war.”

Naveen assured the Prime minister of Odisha government’s full support for implementing a workable solution for this purpose.

Earlier, Kandhamal’s Biju Janata Dal (BJD) MP Dr Achyuta Samanta had urged the Prime Minister and Union health minister Mansukh Mandaviya to come up with a concrete policy for distributing the students from Ukraine to different medical colleges in India at the level they were continuing so that there is no disruption in their academic career.

Citing that India has 605 medical colleges of which 325 exist in the Private sector, Samanta said, “Such a visionary, compassionate step will secure the future and career of the students and their parents will be relieved.”

He said on an average, each college will have to take into its fold 30 students spread across first to fifth year and internship. “It won’t create any extra burden on the infrastructure.”

It will fall well within the norms and standards of the existing medical colleges without any violation. The fees charged to students should be at par with government college. The modalities to facilitate such an arrangement can be decided and worked on by the National Medical Commission and ministry of health,” Samanta said.