Telangana PG medical seats rise to 3,670, but infrastructure gaps raise concerns

Hyderabad: Even as postgraduate (PG) medical seats in Telangana witness a substantial surge to a total of 3,670 seats for the 2026–27 academic year, growing concerns over severe infrastructural deficits are casting a long shadow over quality of medical education, especially related to specialty and super-speciality medical courses.

While the State health department through expansion of PG and Super-specialty seats seeks to boost opportunities for local NEET PG aspirants, student bodies and senior medical professionals have raised serious alarms.

Memes of Telangana Junior Doctors Association (TJUDA) argue that management of government medical colleges in Telangana are rushing to celebrate numerical growth of PG and US seats in Telangana while ignoring ground realities.

The president of TJUDA, Dr. Chandrakanth Reddy Narahari and senior member of Healthcare Reforms Doctors Association (HRDA), Dr. Krthika Nagula, medical colleges are expanding seat matrices without ensuring corresponding upgrades in faculty strength, clinical resources, or advanced diagnostic infrastructure.

A glaring example highlighted by experts is the recent sanction of 10 additional PG Radiodiagnosis seats in certain teaching units despite a complete absence of basic radiology equipment, such as functional MRI machines, required for rigorous, hands-on training.

Doctors pointed out that increasing PG and UG seats without foundational laboratory and clinical support compromises educational quality. Such measures ultimately produce numbers without the practical competence required to serve patients independently.

Postgraduate training must prioritize quality over statistics. Health authorities must pause numerical expansion, fill existing faculty vacancies, upgrade diagnostic infrastructure, and guarantee robust clinical exposure before pushing further, they said.

Disproportionate scaling of student intake directly impacts the working conditions and learning hours of resident doctors. With patient inflows rising rapidly in government tertiary hospitals, overburdened residents find themselves spending excessive time managing routine administrative and clinical overheads rather than receiving structured academic mentorship and surgical guidance from senior faculty, PG doctors said.

Student bodies have warned that they may be forced to step up protests and launch agitations if state health authorities do not immediately audit and upgrade existing medical college infrastructure and establish transparent regulatory mechanisms to protect the future of specialized medical education in Telangana.