BANGALORE: The State Government has flouted Governor T.N. Chaturvedi's recommendation against staring new nursing colleges by sanctioning 24 of them on Tuesday.

The Government cited the relaxation in the all-India ban on nursing colleges by the Indian Nursing Council and a paucity of nurses in the State as reasons for allowing the new colleges.

Officials at the Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences had written to the Medical Education Department requesting them to lift the ban. The university said that in several of its colleges the teacher-student ratio was below the accepted norm of 1:15 at the undergraduate level and 1:5 at the graduate level.

In July 2005, Mr. Chaturvedi, who is the Chancellor of all universities in the State, had written to the Government requesting it not to start any new nursing colleges since the quality of several of the existing colleges was suspect.

"Bogus institutions without any credentials are cheating and deceiving parents and students, thereby bringing disrepute to the Government and the Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences," he noted.

The Governor directed the Government to set up a task force for paramedical education and Indian Systems of Medicine and Homeopathy to look into the issue. The task force, headed by eminent ENT surgeon C.M. Gurumurthy, recommended that no nursing schools or colleges should be sanctioned for the five years from 2006-07 as all nursing schools would be converted into nursing colleges within the period. The recommendations have been placed before the Cabinet.

Nursing schools

Karnataka has the highest number of nursing colleges and schools among all States.

Against the all-India total of 1,540 nursing schools, the State has 549 nursing schools. Most of these schools have come up in the past five years.

In 2003, the State sanctioned 235 nursing schools, and in 2004 it sanctioned 136 schools. Bangalore has 261 nursing schools. Of the 662 nursing colleges in India, the State has 294 colleges. The report noted that the quality of 302 of the nursing schools and 108 of the nursing colleges were unsatisfactory. These schools did not have the required infrastructure and sufficient teacher strength.

Officials of the Medical Education Department said no rules were being flouted by the sanction for schools.

"We have not approved any colleges that have been proposed after the task force report. All sanctions that were awarded were for colleges that had been pending for a long time," said a senior official of the department, who wished to remain anonymous.

"All the institutions that we have sanctioned have excellent infrastructure and meet all the criteria that the task force recommended," the official added.

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