The government has to spend Rs 3.09 crore over five years on each additional medical student in Centre-run institutions to implement the 27 per cent OBC quota while the bill is just one-sixth on their peers in engineering, management and agriculture institutions.

This is what the Veerappa Moily Oversight committee has estimated and has asked the government to spend on every medical student at Centre-run institutions to offset the 27 per cent quota impact. It was, after all, the medicos’ 17-day strike which had forced the government to set up the Oversight panel.

The proposed spending on medical students—calculated by dividing the expansion cost by the number of additional student intake—is the highest amongst all categories. The closest are IIM and management students (Rs 0.63 cr), followed by IIT and engineering students (Rs 0.57 cr) and agriculture students (Rs 0.41 cr).

The sub-group on medical education has asked for implementing the 54 per cent expansion in a ‘‘phased manner’’ over a period of at least ‘‘two years’’. This will add 191 seats to MBBS (undergraduate) courses and 598 to MD/MS (postgraduate courses) at a total cost of Rs 2,442 crore in the next five years.

More than half of this proposed sum will go to AIIMS (Rs 1,341.62 cr). It is followed, in the 11 medical institutions in the purview of this sub-group, by PGI Chandigarh (Rs 578.67 cr) and Lady Hardinge Medical College, Delhi (Rs 263.20 cr).

‘‘Besides these 11 institutions, there are a handful which are covered under the Central universities sub-group, like the Maulana Azad Medical College (Delhi), University College of Medical Sciences (Delhi), BHU’s medical college (Varanasi),’’ Veerappa Moily told The Indian Express. They will get another Rs 500-600 cr, taking the entire allocation to about Rs 3,000 cr.