Reshma Ravishanker

There are 19.2 applicants for every medical seat in India according to data uploaded by StatsofIndia, which gathered data from the National Medical Commission.

This comes days after the evacuation of Indians from war-hit Ukraine showcased how many Indian students went to other countries including China, Ukraine and Russia to pursue medical education citing a shortage of seats here.

ndia has 83,275 MBBS seats for which there are 16 lakh applicants a year. The medical seats demand-supply gap is the highest in the northeastern states. For instance for each MBBS seat in Arunachal Pradesh there are 75 applicants and Meghalaya has 61.2 applicants per MBBS seat. Similarly, in Bihar, the numbers are as high as 36.8 applicants per seat and 30.6 in Jammu and Kashmir. “How many MBBS seats do we have in India? 83,275 seats for 15.9 lakh applicants. That’s 19 students for a single MBBS seat. 5% success rate,” Pratap Vardhan, creator StatsofIndia said.

Across the country, this also implies that there are just about 6 medical seats for every one lakh population. “If we assume our future doctors would come from these colleges. Every year we might produce about 6 new doctors for every 1 lakh population. Southern states will produce more, because more seats and more applicants,” Statsofindia tweeted.

It maybe recollected that an Indian student, Naveen SG of Karnataka who lost his life in war hit Ukraine was also a fourth-year medical student. His father, Shehar Gouda rued that even as he secured a 97 % score in second PU, he failed to secure a seat in any medical college in the state. The father of this 21-year-old is an farmer for who the fee in medical colleges in India would drill a hole in the pocket. “We sent him there because he was keen on pursuing medicine. This proved costly for us,” he lamented.

Ironically, he hails from Karnataka, a state that has largest number of medical seats in India. The state has 9,345 medical seats and for every MBBS seat, there are 12.8 applicants. Among the other states with a high number of medical seats, Maharshtra has 9,000 seats while Uttar Pradesh has 7,428 seats.

Also read: Indian students stare at uncertainty over completing MBBS in Ukraine