Hyderabad: The Union government said on Friday that no proposals from Telangana have been received for the construction of new medical colleges. Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare Bharati Pravin Pawar informed the Lok Sabha of this as a response to a question posed by Telangana Party Congress Committee head A. Revanth Reddy.
The Centrally Sponsored Scheme (CSS) offers states with the “establishment of new medical colleges attached with existing district/referral hospitals”. This scheme, launched in 2014, asked state governments to submit proposals for colleges in two phases so far. Phase 1 and Phase 2 have seen the approval of 157 new medical colleges and currently have 71 functioning colleges.
For phase 3, the Centre asked the state governments and UTs to submit the proposals and has already given approval for 75 medical colleges. However, they have said that no proposals have been received from Telangana.
In 2015, then state health minister Laxma Reddy wrote a letter to the then Union minister JP Nadda. In response, JP Nadda said that the medical colleges sought by Telangana were not in the list of hospitals approved by the Union cabinet for the upgradation under the CCS.
In 2019, another letter was written by the Telangana government to the then health minister Harsh Vardhan, urging him to upgrade the district hospitals, especially in Karimnagar and Khammam district hospitals to medical colleges. He replied stating that the government could not cover Telangana in Phase-1 and Phase-2 of the CSS but would definitely consider the same in Phase-3.
