New dental colleges to come up at 11 campuses across Maharashtra

Three-and-a-half decades after the last government dental college and hospital was established, the Maharashtra government is planning to start such institutions in state-run medical colleges.

Senior officials from the Directorate of Medical Education and Research (DMER) said they were considering new government dental colleges at the premises of 11 medical colleges in Pune, Dhule, Ambejogai (Beed), Latur, Nanded, Yavatmal, Akola, Chandrapur, Gondia, Miraj and Kolhapur.

A dental college has also been proposed at the Greenfield medical hub at Jalgaon, which will offer courses in medicine, dentistry, ayurveda, homeopathy, nursing and paramedics. With each dental college likely to have 100 seats, these facilities may have an intake of 1,200 seats for the Bachelors in Dentistry (BDS) course.

PG medical courses will have no quota this year in Haryana

Medical colleges in Haryana, as per the state government rules, will have no reservation for students belonging to the Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes and backwards classes in admission to the postgraduate courses (MD/MS/PG Diploma and MDS) this year.

A proposal in November 2016 by Department of Medical Education and Research (DMER) suggesting reservation of seats for admission to the PG courses for the 2017-18 session, has been turned down by the state government of Haryana. Since there is not much time left for the new academic session, the government has decided that the issue must be examined in details before putting up orders the next academic year.

The decision was taken at a meeting held recently at the CM’s residence, which was attended, among others, by AG Baldev Raj Mahajan and Additional Chief Secretary (DMER) Dhanpat Singh.

Sources said the government had taken this decision on the opinion given by Advocate-General Baldev Raj Mahajan, who stated that since there were limited seats in the PG courses and no reservation had been provided in the state since 1971, the issues involved required a detailed examination.