A day after Himachal Pradesh minister Kaul Singh announced that four new medical colleges, including the ESIC college, coming up in the state would be run on self-financing basis, state BJP today dubbed the decision as "first step" towards privatisation and betrayal of the people.
"The state government's decision to take over ESIC Medical College was wrong in the first instance. Now the move to run the college in self-financing mode is the beginning of privatisation of the college and betrayal of the people," state BJP's media head Parveen Sharma claimed.
Urging the government to reverse its decision, he alleged there was a provision of reservation of 40 per cent MBBS seats for Himachalis, but now only rich students would be benefited and poor meritorious students would suffer.
The ESIC Medical College at Ner Chowk in Mandi district was the first medical college of ESIC in the country and the state government had provided 31 acres of land, Sharma said.
The foundation stones of ESIC Medical Colleges at Faridabad in Haryana and Gulbarga in Karnataka were later laid and all three colleges were inaugurate in 2014, he said.
"But while the other two medical colleges are being run by ESIC, the Himachal Pradesh government is being forced to run the one at Mandi in self financing mode due to its callous attitude," he alleged.
