Patnaik has sent his latest letter to the Union Health and Family Welfare Minister Anbumani Ramadoss seeking his intervention in the Medical Council of India's decision decrease the number of seats in the Shriram Chandra Bhanja Medical College and Hospital in Cuttack.

In a recent communication to the State government, the Union Health Ministry had informed that a team of the Medical Council visited the medical college in Cuttack in March this year and based of the team's report, the Council had found deficiencies in teaching staff, nursing staff and other infrastructure.

In view of the deficiencies, the Ministry gad decided not to recommend renewal of permission for admission of fresh batch of students against the last academic session's increased intake from 107 to 150.

Patnaik's letter seemed to be silent about the deficiencies pointed out by the Medical Council team. The press statement issued to the media by his office had no mention whether the government had taken any step to remove the deficiencies to pave the way for admission of 150 students in the current academic session.

In order to justify his demand, the Chief Minister pointed out that the decision to decrease the seats from 150 to 107 would affect the health services as the State was already facing acute shortage of doctors in its rural interiors.

With half of the medical students passing out from the government medical colleges joining the private sector there was shortage of doctors in rural areas affecting smooth implementation of various schemes health programme that were aimed at fighting child and maternal mortality, malaria, chikungunya and water-borne diseases, Patnaik said.

In his letter, Patnaik urged Ramadoss to take necessary steps not to decrease the number of seats from 150 to 107 in SCB Medical College.

He also demanded that the number of seats in the MKCG Medical College and Hospital at Berhampur and VSS Medical College and Hospital at Burla from the present 107 seats to 150 seats in both the colleges.