NMC Clears 1,300 New Medical Seats, Two Private Colleges for Karnataka
The National Medical Commission (NMC) has approved two new private medical colleges in Karnataka for the academic year 2026-27 and sanctioned an additional 1,300 undergraduate medical seats for the state.
The new colleges are Alva’s Institute of Medical Sciences and Research Centre (AIMSRC) in Dakshina Kannada district, with a capacity of 150 seats, and Chettinad Institute of Medical Education and Research (CIMER) in BEML Nagar, Kolar district, with a capacity of 100 seats. This brings Karnataka’s total number of medical colleges to 75 — 24 government-run and 51 private. Last year, the state had 73 operating medical colleges.
Earlier, the state government had proposed six new medical colleges, including three government colleges in Ramanagara, Kanakapura, and Bagalkot, and three private institutions. However, citing inadequate infrastructure and a shortage of human resources, the NMC approved only the two private colleges.
Alongside the new colleges, the NMC has granted a total enhancement of 1,300 MBBS seats for Karnataka for the current academic year. Of these, 150 seats have been allocated to government medical colleges and 1,150 to private colleges. This brings the total number of MBBS seats in the state to 15,395 across all 75 colleges, up from 14,095 seats available last year.
With this increase, Karnataka now has the highest number of medical seats among all Indian states. For comparison, Uttar Pradesh has 88 colleges with roughly 14,000 seats, Maharashtra has 84 colleges with 13,099 seats, and Tamil Nadu has 78 colleges with 13,999 seats.
B.L. Sujatha Rathod, Director of the Directorate of Medical Education, confirmed the development: “This year, the state has been allocated an additional 1,300 medical seats by the NMC, taking the total number of seats to over 15,000. With this, Karnataka has become the state with the highest number of medical seats in the country. The NEET-2026 results have been released recently, and the counselling process for the allocation of medical seats will begin soon. The seat matrix will be submitted to the Karnataka Examination Authority (KEA) shortly.”
