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A day after the Union ministry of health and family welfare approved an additional 970 seats in the government and civic-run medical colleges in the state, medical education Minister Girish Mahajan said that another 700 MBBS seats will be sanctioned for the private medical colleges in the next few days. Mahajan said that the centre will clear the proposal by early next week. "Once the proposal for additional MBBS seats in private colleges is cleared, Maharashtra will get 600-700 seats extra for this year. We are also pushing for more seats in the government colleges. We had demanded 2000 seats extra," said Mahajan on the sidelines of a BJP event in Dadar on Saturday. There are 11 private medical colleges in the state with a cumulative intake capacity of 1850 students. Earlier this month, the board of governors, medical council of India, sought applications from state government to increase the MBBS seats across the country.The state had demanded 813 additional PG seats and 1740 additional UG seats for the state. Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on June 6 had met minister Dr Harsh Vardhan to press for this demand.

There are in all 3160 UG seats and 2030 PG seats in the state. Officials said that the additional seats have been calculated to ensure that the number of seats left in the open category should be almost the same which existed before the implementation of the 16% SEBC quota and the 10% EWS quota. Currently there is a 68% quota in the case and an additional 10% . Officials said that the introduction of the economically weaker section (EWS) quota has led to the largest one-time addition to the pool of medical seats in the country in more than a decade.

With the State government yet to take a call on whether it will implement the 10% reservation for the Economically Weaker Section (EWS) for this academic year, there is uncertainty over whether Karnataka will get around 630 additional medical seats. The Union government had stated that for the 2019-20 academic year, the Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe and Other Backward Class reservation would be left intact, and this would be achieved by increasing the number of seats by 25%. While the State government has appointed a committee to take a call on this matter, it has issued directions to the authorities concerned on the procedure for issuing certificates so that people can avail reservation in Central government posts, services and educational institutions.