IIT-Kharagpur to launch MBBS course from 2019

IIT-Kharagpur will be the first technology institute to offer medicine courses, set to start from the 2019 session with a batch of 50 students.

A 400-bed hospital on the campus , which will act as a teaching facility, will start admitting patients from mid-2018. The institute will seek permission from the Medical Council of India only after the hospital starts functioning. “For the first MBBS batch, we will restrict the number of candidates to 50,” said Sriman Kumar Bhattacharyya, deputy director of the country’s oldest IIT. The MBBS degree will be awarded by IIT-Kharagpur, which is yet to formulate the admission process. “We will be at liberty to conduct our own entrance examination and not necessarily admit students from NEET. The IITs are governed by a separate law, which enables them to hold their own admission exams, like for engineering courses. Admissions to engineering take place through IIT-JEE (Advanced). A final decision is yet to be taken,” a source said.

Explaining the reason behind introducing the course, Bhattacharyya said, “The purpose is to cater to the needs of local patients as well as the institute. We want this to be a research hospital and patients should benefit from the technological developments at IIT.”