Chandigarh, March 6 -- Punjab health and family welfare minister Balbir Singh on Thursday shared the progress of the upcoming seven new medical colleges across the state. These include two government medical colleges, two institutions under the public-private partnership (PPP) mode, and three through private and minority organisations. Addressing the media here, Singh said the construction work for the Shaheed Udham Singh State Institute of Medical Sciences in Hoshiarpur will begin on March 20, with a completion deadline of March 2028. He said the Rs.274.75-crore project had received administrative approval. It will be a 300-bedded hospital, alongside a medical college with a 100-seat annual MBBS intake. The minister highlighted that through a meticulous review of previous estimates, the Punjab government had managed to reduce the project cost from an initial Rs.550 crore estimate to Rs.274 crore, effectively saving nearly Rs.250 crore of public funds. Apart from Hoshiarpur, Dr Balbir Singh said another government medical college was also being established in Kapurthala for which the tender process had been completed and construction will begin shortly. Two colleges will also come up in Sangrur and SBS Nagar under the PPP mode, with their tender processes also underway, he said. He said a Jain Minority College was coming up in Lehragaga, for which the government had leased land after signing an MoU, while the Muslim Minority College to be established in Malerkotla had submitted its DPR to the central government. Similarly, a private medical college was also coming up near Ludhiana, he added. The health minister said the establishment of seven medical colleges will significantly increase the state's medical education capacity and local students will no longer have to go to countries like Ukraine, China or Nepal to get medical degrees. Punjab currently has 13 medical colleges with 1,900 MBBS seats, and with these new institutions, approximately 600 additional seats will be added, he said. He announced that existing medical colleges in Patiala, Amritsar and Faridkot were also being upgraded to the level of postgraduate institutes to provide super-specialty services....