KOLKATA: Medical students desperate to get a seat in Bengal have got a breather. The Medical Council of India (MCI) has restored 40% of the seats it had slashed during inspection of state-run government colleges and two private colleges. Still, there are only around 1,755 medical seats up for grabs instead of 2,400. At the end of its two-day meeting in Delhi on Saturday, MCI's executive committee decided to restore 400 seats in Bengal in response to chief secretary Sanjay Mitra's written undertaking to meet the council's infrastructure criteria within three months. Of the seats restored, 50 are in Burdwan Medical College, 100 in Murshidabad Medical College, 150 at IQ-City Medical College and 100 in ICARE Institute of Medical Sciences, Haldia.

This year, as many as 63,330 students took the West Bengal Joint Entrance Examination (Medical), of whom 4,433 cracked it and are eligible for counselling. "After receiving compliance reports, the executive committee has restored a number of seats in 381 colleges across the country, including some from West Bengal," vice-president of the executive committee C V Bhirmanandha told TOI over phone. Council member from Bengal, Sudipto Ray said, "MCI has cleared four medical colleges, two government and two private, for this year."

According to another exexecutive committee member, there is very little scope of restoring more seats for this academic session. "According to the Supreme Court deadline, medical colleges should complete their first round of counseling by June 25 and in that case the MCI has very little scope for further inspection. So it is very likely that in this academic session there will be no further increase of seats". He explained that MCI begins its first round of inspection in June and asks colleges to send compliance reports by September. Thereafter, MCI's technical committee carries out a second round of inspection and sanctions or rejects seats. "But this year, we had our election in February and so there was no chance to hold a second round of inspection," he said. Explaining the rationale behind the slashing of seats another executive member said: "The seats that were slashed are additional ones incorporated by medical colleges in the last couple of years. Any increase in the number of seats should be accompanied with a development of infrastructure, but not a single college complied with the MCI directive. The council repeatedly asked these colleges to meet the necessary criteria, but every year they sent written undertakings and continued operating as usual."