Few takers for ESIC quota seats in UP medical colleges

KANPUR: There are hardly any takers for medical seats reserved by the Employees State Insurance Corporation (ESIC) in the medical colleges of the country due to lack of information about the facility.

The scheme is available for past several years but very few candidates from the state showed interest in availing the facility of cheaper medical education provided by ESIC.

The facility of admission to the medical colleges is available for the children of employees who are working in private establishments and are the members of the ESIC.

“The ESIC has reserved 332 seats in the nine medical colleges of the country where children of members of the ESIC who have cleared National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) but got low ranking could be admitted,” said AP Tripathi, additional commissioner, ESIC.

He said people of other states were taking advantage of the reserved seats but the ESIC members in UP seemed ignorant about it.

The nine hospitals are situated in Delhi (30 seats), Kerala (35 seats), Haryana (35 seats), Kolkata (52 seats), Chennai (20 seats), Bangalore (45 seats) Karnataka (45 seats) Hyderabad (50 seats) and Tamil Nadu (20 seats) he said. Besides, at a Dental College in Karnataka 22 seats were reserved for the wards of the ESIC members, he added.

If selected under ESIC quota, the students have to pay Rs 24,000 per annum as tuition fee and Rs 5,000 as caution money which was refundable, Tripathi said.

Only 11 applications from the wards of the ESIC members were received from the different parts of the state this year. While six applications were received from Kanpur, two were received at regional office Lucknow and Noida, one at Varanasi.