New Delhi: In a bid to ensure that the number of general category seats does not decrease due to implementation of the OBC quota, the Centre has directed medical colleges run by it to frame a detailed plan for increasing seats by June 15.
AIIMS, which has received a letter from the Health Ministry asking to increase number of seats by June 15, has said that it has enough infrastructure for enhancing the seats from the current 50 to 90, officials said.
Safdarjung Hospital is coming up with a new college, which will lead to increase in the seats from 100 to 154, they said. The Centre has asked all the nine medical colleges, including AIIMS, RML, Lady Hardinge, Safdarjung, PGI Chandigarh, NIMHANS - Bangalore, JIPMER - Pondicherry and Central Institute of Psychiatry - Ranchi, to assess their infrastructure and frame a plan to increase the number of seats, officials said.
The government has also asked PGI Chandigarh to begin undergraduate courses.
"The college has informed that it has the infrastructure for about 100 undergraduate seats," an official said.
Medicos have so far kept their agitation alive by saying that the number of general category seats would decrease due to lack of infrastructure if the 27 per cent quota for OBCs is implemented.
The CPI on Sunday appealed to the striking medicos to call off their strike and said that to persist with the agitation now would only mean that the aim was to do away with reservation itself, which was a necessary form of affirmative action.
Meanwhile, the pro-reservation activists staged a demonstration in Chennai demanding promulgation of an ordinance immediately for 27 per cent reservation for OBCs in central higher educational institutions from the current academic year.
Supporting the Centre's reservation policy for OBCs, Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind general secretary Mahmood Madani demanded reservations for the Muslim community on the basis of population.
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