The government is in the process of liberalising norms and doing away with archaic rules for establishment of new medical colleges across the country to meet the ever growing demand of doctors. According to sources, the Ministry of Health has asked the Medical Council of India (MCI), the apex medical education regulator, to rationalise and redefine its norms for setting up medical colleges and do away with rules that add little value to education but lead to higher cost of education for students.

A top Health Ministry official said that the norms governing medical college establishment need to be reworked to enable new medical colleges to come up. He said, they plan to add at least 6,000 new MBBS seats in the next year to help reduce the doctor-patient ratio which is a poor 1 for 2000, currently.

Among norms under scanner are the requirement of vast spreads of land for colleges and compulsory auditoria, playgrounds, classrooms, libraries and labs of vast dimensions. Also proposed, is easing of norms for hiring of faculty by allowing adjunct faculty so as to reduce the high cost of medical education.