The Medical Council of India’s board of governors has approved increasing postgraduate medical seats for MD and MS programmes by over 4,800 to 36,192 for the next academic session, an official said on Monday.

BoG chairman and Niti Aayog member V.K. Paul said the increase is more than the total number of additional seats created in the past five years.

“The Narendra Modi government in 2014 had promised to double PG and UG medical seats by 2024. So, in that direction the board of governors-vested with power of the Medical Council of India has given its approval to increase postgraduate medical seats (broad speciality) in 2020-21 session by 4,807.

“So, as a result, in the new academic session counselling, 36,192 PG medical seats (MD/MS, broad speciality) will be available,” Paul said.

Paul also said the capacity expansion would improve tertiary care in the country.

“In 2020-21 academic session, approximately 44,000 postgraduate medical seats (36,192 MD/MS seats and 8,000 DNB/FNB seats) will be available for 54,000 undergraduate MBBS pass-outs,” he said.

MS is the postgraduate degree in general surgery, while MD is the postgraduate degree in general medicine. In 2014-15, there were over 23,000 PG medical seats in both government and private medical colleges.

Paul said the Niti Aayog is working with the health ministry to encourage large hospitals to offer resident doctors Diplomate or Fellow of National Board (DNB/FNB) courses.

Recently, to address the shortage of qualified doctors, the Niti Aayog had come out with the public-private partnership model to link new or existing private medical colleges with district hospital to augment medical seats.