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NEET: 48,563 MBBS, 29,080 PG seats added in 6 years as govt expands medical education

The government has also approved the addition of 10,023 new medical seats under centrally sponsored schemes in government medical colleges between 2025-26 and 2028-29, further accelerating capacity expansion.

3 min readNew DelhiUpdated: Dec 17, 2025 12:01 PM IST

The government has also approved the addition of 10,023 new medical seats under centrally sponsored schemes in government medical colleges between 2025–26 and 2028–29 (Express Photo by Amit Chakravarty/ representative)

India has added 48,563 MBBS seats and 29,080 postgraduate (MD/MS) seats between the academic years 2020–21 and 2025–26, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare informed the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday.

In a written reply to an unstarred question, Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare Anupriya Patel said the expansion was undertaken based on inputs from the National Medical Commission (NMC) to bridge healthcare workforce gaps, especially in underserved regions.

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According to the data shared, MBBS seats saw a steady rise over the years, with the highest annual increase of 11,119 seats in 2025–26, while postgraduate medical seats recorded their sharpest jump of 7,619 seats in the same academic year.

According to the annexure tabled in Parliament, the annual increase in MBBS seats began with 2,963 seats in 2020-21, followed by a sharp rise of 8,790 seats in 2021-22. The expansion continued with the addition of 7,398 seats in 2022-23, 9,652 seats in 2023-24, and 8,641 seats in 2024-25, before reaching its highest annual increase of 11,119 MBBS seats in 2025-26. These additions cumulatively increased 48,563 MBBS seats over six academic years.

Postgraduate medical education also saw a sustained expansion during the same period. The number of PG seats increased by 4,983 in 2020-21, followed by 4,705 seats in 2021-22. In 2022-23, the increase stood at 2,874 seats, after which it rose again to 4,713 seats in 2023-24 and 4,186 seats in 2024-25. The highest growth in postgraduate seats was recorded in 2025-26, when 7,619 new PG seats were added, taking the total increase over six years to 29,080 seats, the annexure showed.

The government has also approved the addition of 10,023 new medical seats under centrally sponsored schemes in government medical colleges between 2025-26 and 2028-29, further accelerating capacity expansion.

The ministry said the increased intake has had a direct bearing on improving the doctor–population ratio across states, including Rajasthan, and has made domestic medical education more accessible to Indian students. The expansion, it added, has also reduced students’ dependence on pursuing medical education abroad.

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Addressing concerns about quality, the government said the NMC has put in place multiple regulatory frameworks, including Minimum Standards Requirements (MSR), Graduate Medical Education Regulations (GMER) 2023, Maintenance of Standards of Medical Education Regulations (MSMER) 2023, and the Competency-Based Medical Education (CBME) Curriculum Guidelines 2024, to ensure that seat expansion does not dilute academic and clinical standards.