New Delhi, June 29
Aspirants of medical education will have wider admissions choices from this September.

Six new AIIMS-like institutes are all set to start operations with batches of 50 students each. This means an additional 300 seats will be up for competition from this year onwards.

Following a review meeting of the new AIIMS-like institutes coming up at Patna, Bhubaneshwar, Jodhpur, Rishikesh, Raipur and Bhopal, the government said the institutes would be operational by September and will begin admissions with 50 students. These will be increased to 100 a year later.

The review meeting was attended by the Health Ministers of Bihar, Odisha and Uttarakhand and Health Secretaries of other three states where the new institutes are to come up. Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad chaired the meeting.

At present, the infrastructure facilities at the new institutes is being developed and once the facilities are fully ready, 100 students will be inducted annually.

Bihar will issue an ordinance to start courses at Patna AIIMS because the hospital to which the institute has to be attached is not yet ready.

The opening of new AIIMS will help correct the regional imbalance in the current availability of undergraduate medical seats and colleges across India, where south and west have the bulk of these facilities.

Central and east India comprising Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Bihar and Odisha have a small share in India’s total MBBS seats and 335 medical colleges.

India has decided to gradually increase the availability of MBBS seats to 80,000 by 2021 and the addition of new institutes will help it meet the target. The idea is also to meet the high doctor shortage of up to 8 lakh.

Meanwhile, Patna and Bhopal AIIMS have their directors in place and the appointments of the rest will soon be done by the Cabinet’s Appointments Committee.

Admission to the new AIIMS will take place on the basis of the AIIMS undergraduate admission test which has already taken place.

AIIMS, New Delhi, inducts only 77 students at MBBS level every year. The rest in the merit will be accommodated in the new institutes.