The Jharkhand government recruited some teaching doctors, raising hope of facilitating medical studies for more students in new medical colleges of the state.

Following walk-in interviews of willing doctors, the government offered jobs on October 20 to 43 professors and associate professors on contract basis, initially for two years, mostly for the three newly opened medical colleges in Dumka, Hazaribagh and Daltonganj.

The admission process that was stopped in these colleges last year for lack of adequate faculty and infrastructure would be opened and students would be allowed to take admission this time.

These medical colleges, established under a centrally sponsored scheme, enabled 300 more aspiring students of the state to study medicine, 100 in each of those.

Both the central and state governments had also released required funds for establishing these colleges by upgrading the existing district hospitals at Dumka, Hazaribagh and Daltonganj. Accordingly, the first batches comprising 100 students were given admission in each of those three colleges in 2019-20.

But the National Medical Council (NMC) stopped admission to those colleges the next year (2020-21), citing lack of infrastructure and faculty.

Following this, chief minister Hemant Soren wrote a letter to then NMC chairman Dr Suresh Chandra Sharma in November last year requesting the latter not to stop admission process when the same for 2020-21 had just begun.

When his letter yielded no positive results, Soren approached then Union health minister Harsh Vardhan the next month (December 2020), seeking his intervention.

“This (the NMC decision of stopping the admission process) has sent a shockwave among the aspiring students of this poor, backward and tribal state,” Soren said in his letter, adding these colleges were “located in aspirational districts where the Union government was keen on improving the education system and the Niti Aayog was monitoring (the districts) in all spheres”.

“The state is fully aware and committed to fulfilment of the NMC norms,” he further wrote to the Union health minister.

Meanwhile, after the state government tried to fulfil the requirements, NMC allowed admission into the new medical college in Dumka recently but the not in the rest two.

“It’s good to learn that many faculty members have been appointed, raising possibility of students getting admission to those medical colleges,” Ranchi MP Seth told The Telegraph.

Besides fulfilling aspirations of the deserving students, these medical colleges are also expected to cater to the people of those areas by treating them locally so that they need not come to Ranchi for treatment, he added.

“Now that 36 of the 43 faculty members have been recruited for these new colleges, we are hopeful admission would also be allowed in the remaining two in Hazaribagh and Daltonganj,” said another faculty member who did not like to be quoted.

Though the students lost the chance last year, they would now get the benefit if these colleges are allowed to admit them, he further said, adding 200 medical seats mean a lot for aspiring students.