Gandhinagar: Undeterred by the Medical Council of India's rejection of its proposals for starting three new medical colleges in the current academic year, the Gujarat government has decided to set up eight new medical colleges in the state in the next two years.

Health Minister Jaynarayan Vyas on Sunday said that the state government is going ahead with the preparations to set up eight new medical colleges, including the three for which proposals for which were rejected by the MCI earlier. "If not this year, we are sure to get approval for the same in the next year," he said.

The Gujarat government has already requested the MCI to review the decision to reject the proposals for the three new medical colleges at Sola in Ahmedabad, Gotri in Vadodara and the K.J. Mehta medical college in Bhavnagar. A high-level team led by the state health secretary and the director of medical education have already discussed the issue with authorities concerned in Delhi.

Besides these three, the state government also proposes to set up a medical college each in Patan and Valsad while the locations of the three others, for which provisions were made in the current year's budget, would be decided soon, Vyas said. In addition, the Gujarat Cancer Research Institute had also proposed to set up a medical college in Ahmedabad, he said.

According to Vyas, two of the three colleges were granted permission earlier when Ketan Desai was the chairman of the MCI while a decision on the third was pending after the necessary inspections were carried out by the MCI team.

Following the arrest of Desai on graft charges, the MCI cancelled the previous permissions and put all the proposals for a fresh inspection by a new team which rejected the proposals.

It has only given the approval for the Adani Institute of Medical Sciences in Bhuj with a 150-seat capacity. IANS