PM inaugurates 11 new medical colleges and a new campus of CICT in Tamil Nadu

Tags: National News

The Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi inaugurated 11 new medical colleges and a new campus of Central Institute of Classical Tamil (CICT) in Tamil Nadu on 12 January 2022 through video conference. Union Health Minister Dr Mansukh Mandaviya, and Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu M.K.Stalin were present on the occasion.

• The new medical colleges are being established at an estimated cost of about Rs 4000 crore, out of which around Rs 2145 crore has been provided by the Union government and rest by the Tamil Nadu government. 
• The districts in which the new Medical Colleges are being established are Virudhunagar, Namakkal, The Nilgiris, Tiruppur, Thiruvallur, Nagapattinam, Dindigul, Kallakurichi, Ariyalur, Ramanathapuram and Krishnagiri. 
• The new medical colleges, with cumulative capacity of 1450 seats, are being established under the Centrally Sponsored scheme of ’Establishing of New Medical Colleges attached with existing district/referral hospital’. Under the scheme, medical colleges are established in districts, which do not have either a government or private medical college.
• The establishment of a new campus of Central Institute of Classical Tamil (CICT) in Chennai is in line with the Prime Minister’s vision to protect and preserve Indian heritage and promote classical languages. 
• The new campus is fully funded by the Union Government and is built at a cost of Rs 24 Crore. 
• An autonomous organization under the Union Ministry of Education, CICT is contributing to the promotion of classical Tamil by doing research activities so as to establish the ancientness and uniqueness of Tamil language. The institute library has a rich collection of over 45,000 ancient Tamil Texts.

Statistics from PM’s Speech-

• In 2014, the country had 387 medical colleges. Whereas in 2021, this number has gone up to 596. This is an increase of 54%. 
• In 2014, India had around 82 thousand medical Undergraduate and Postgraduate seats. Whereas in 2021, this number has gone up to around 1 lakh 48 thousand seats. This is an increase of about 80%.
• In 2014, there were only seven AIIMS in the country. Whereas till 2021, the number of AIIMS approved has increased to 22.