Admission to Balangir Medical College will start from Sept 2018

Following is a report from the Telegraph:

Balangir: The state government has announced that admission to Balangir medical college would begin from the coming academic session.

The health and family welfare department’s commissioner-cum-secretary Pramod Meherda announced this on Thursday evening. Meherda, who is the nodal officer for Balangir, is on a tour of the district.

Earlier, delegates of various organisations of Balangir such as the Balangir Citizen Committee, Bhumika, Being Human and the Balangir Merchants’ Association met Meherda and raised the issue of the proposed college.

After a meeting with district collector N. Turumala Nayak, project director of the Balangir district rural development agency Maheswar Mallik and chief district medical officer Sugyanendra Mishra, Meherda told reporters that admission of the first batch of MBBS in Balangir medical college would commence from the coming session.

He said all preparations were going on to ensure that the college became functional from September. “Things are going pretty well, and we have enough time to complete the requisite works before the medical college becomes functional in September,” he said.

Meherda further said a Medical Council of India team had visited to take stock of the college infrastructure last year and would pay a visit again in April. “Last year, the council had visited the proposed college site to study its infrastructure. They would visit again in April,” Meherda said.Meherda also paid a visit to the 100-student strength medical college building and other infrastructures on the campus at Gandhrel, the site of the proposed college. He also visited the 300-bed hospital.The news has brought cheer among the aspirants, who are going to appear for the NEET, the national-level entrance test for admission into various medical colleges in the country.

Harish Rout, who would take the exam in May, said he was elated to hear that there would be admission in Balangir medical college in the coming session. “At last, the dream of the people of Balangir is going to be fulfilled,” he said. The UPA government at the Centre had in 2014 planned government medical colleges in four places in the state – Koraput, Balangir, Baripada and Balasore. Student admissions to the colleges in Koraput and Baripada had begun in the last academic session in 2017.