Kokrajhar Medical College gets nod to start 2023-2024 session

GUWAHATI: The newly built Kokrajhar Medical College (KMC) on Tuesday received a nod from the National Medical Commission (NMC) to start functioning from 2023-24 academic session with 100 MBBS seats. The KMC has officially become the 10th medical college in Assam.
Elated at the feat, chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma tweeted: “We’ve achieved another milestone! Happy to share that Kokrajhar Medical College has received the approval of National Medical Commission for 100 MBBS seats. This will take our total number of MBBS seats to 1300, a marked improvement from 726 in 2017.”
The KMC is being built at an estimated cost of over Rs 500 crore, where Rs 292 crore has been granted from the Union government.
A team of the NMC visited the medical college in January, while two more medical colleges, in Nalbari and Nagaon will be inspected by NMC teams soon.
According to the letter from the Medical Assessment & Rating Board (MARB) of the NMC, KMC has been allowed to start functioning under Srimanta Sankardeva University of Health Sciences, Guwahati.
State health minister Keshab Mahanta said, “Our government is going ahead with the plan to construct one medical college in each district with the state-of-the-art facilities, which will offer affordable healthcare service. The government has a plan to build 24 medical colleges by 2026.”
Sources in the health department told TOI that the NMC team members may arrive for assessment of Nalbari and Nagaon medical colleges within a week.
“We are hopeful that Nalbari and Nagaon medical colleges will also get NMC’s approval to start MBBS course for 100 seats each. If we get both the approvals, the number of MBBS seats in state’s medical colleges will go up to 1,500 from this year itself,” said Assam director of medical education Dr Anup Kumar Barman.