Chief Secretary, Atal Dulloo today held a meeting of Health & Medical Education (H&ME) Department to take assessment of the steps taken by the Department to add more MBBS, Post-graduate (PG) or Post-Doctoral seats in the medical colleges established across the districts of J&K.

Besides this, the Chief Secretary also took this occasion to access the upgradation of services offered to patients here along with completion of dozens of health projects taken-up in the length and breadth of the UT.

Besides the Secretary H&ME, the meeting was attended by Secretary, PWD; MD, NHM; Principals of Medical Colleges; Director Health Jammu/Kashmir; MD, JKMSCL and other concerned officers.

Dulloo enquired from each of the Medical College Principal about the steps they had taken to add the specialization courses like MD/MS, DM/MCH and DNB in their respective hospitals.

 He also impressed upon the Principals of 07 New Medical Colleges to take necessary measures to add 50 more MBBS seats in addition to their intake capacity of 100 seats each.. He urged them to utilize the infrastructure and manpower available with them to achieve this feat besides aiming for adding other specializations.

He advised for formulating a concrete plan of action to upgrade the tertiary care services in all the newly established Medical Colleges and District Hospitals in next one year. He remarked that the government would extend full support to the health institutions aiming to make the necessary upgradations with optimum utilization of their available resources.

Dulloo also took note of the human resources available in each of the medical college. He called for referring all the unfilled teaching vacancies besides taking steps to fill the positions of Professors through proper channel as this manpower is essential to augment the services and courses offered by them.

On this occasion, the Chief Secretary also reviewed the status of IT based services like Tele-ICU, e-Sanjeevani, Tele Radiology, e-Sahaj, Scan & Share here in hospitals of J&K. He suggested to make health services universal and seamless by adopting these modules at an earliest. He made out that the Department should also choose some far off districts to be linked to GMCs under Tele-ICU program to minimize referrals from there.

The Chief Secretary also took project wise status of major works taken up by the Department in different areas of J&K. He asked about the physical progress made in each of these projects besides the estimated dates of completion for each of them.

While speaking in this meeting, the Secretary H&ME Dr Syed Abid Rashid Shah informed that our Medical Colleges had applied to NMC for 213 PG seats, 88 DNB and 28 DM/MCH seats for the session 2025-26. He revealed that the Department is hopeful to get the necessary approval as they have chalked a program to follow it up at the highest level.

He further gave in-depth analysis of college-wise seats and courses for which the applications had been made. Regarding addition of 50 MBBS Seats in new GMCs, it was said that same shall be taken up for the next session after requisite upgradation in human resource and infrastructure as per the set norms. It was added that proposals from GMC Baramulla, Anantnag & Kathua had been received in this regard.

The infrastructure projects which came up for review during this meeting includes key infrastructure projects like completion of New Medical Colleges, Additional block of LD Hospital, State Cancer Institute at Jammu/Srinagar, R.N Chopra Nursing Home Jammu, Labour block at SMGS Hospital, MCH Lamberi, DH at Reshipora (Budgam), and 100/50 bedded critical care blocks under PM ABHIM, ECRP programme.