Medical college to come up at ESI Hospital in Ludhiana this year

The Employees State Insurance Corporation (ESIC) Hospital will start a ESI medical college from this session, which is expected to begin from August-September. In the first batch, 50 students will be given admission as per guidelines of the National Medical Council (NMC), which also conducts NEET. The counselling of the students will start in two-weeks’ time from now.

Talking to The Tribune, the Dean, ESIC Hospital, here, Prof Inder Pawar, said it would be the first medical college and hospital by the Central Government in this part of the region. However, in the state, Patiala, Amritsar and Faridkot have government medical colleges.

“We will start with the college and a separate building and two floors are designated to hold classes for the first batch. As far as the hostel facilities are concerned, the hospital has tied up with the BSNL in BRS Nagar for accommodating their students, who would be coming from different parts of the country,” said Professor Pawar.

The hospital has completed other projects, including setting up of a lab, lecture theatre, classes, etc, for the medical students, who will seek admission in this session. For coming up with permanent space for the college campus and hostel, the ESIC authorities are in touch with the district administration for providing land and a chunk of land was shown at the Jalandhar Bypass but since the land was disputed, it cannot be finalised as it also does not fulfil the NMC criteria.

The Medical Superintendent of ESI Hospital Aparajita De’souza said the medical college would be of great help to students coming from different backgrounds as they would have to pay nominal government fees for entire studies. The faculty was being arranged by the Central Government and the required recruitment of faculty would be completed before the onset of classes, she said.

The ESIC already runs seven hospitals in the state at Ludhiana, Amritsar, Jalandhar, Hoshiarpur, Phagwara, Mandi Gobindgarh and Mohali. It is now working to build new hospitals in Dera Bassi, Rajpura, Malerkotla, Bathinda and Moga.