Chandigarh, July 12 -- Government Medical College and Hospital (GMCH), Sector 32, has received the National Medical Commission's approval to raise its MBBS intake from 150 to 200 seats, effective the 2026-27 academic session, taking its undergraduate capacity to the highest in the tricity. Director Ravneet Kaur said the college had applied for the increase in January this year. "The increase in seats also increases our responsibility to maintain the standard we currently have and reach better heights," she said. With the addition, GMCH pulls ahead of the tricity's other medical institutions. Panchkula has no MBBS seats of its own, while Dr. B. R. Ambedkar State Institute of Medical Sciences (AIMS) Ajitgarh, Mohali, currently offers 100. The fresh seats would take the tricity's combined MBBS capacity to 300. The Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER), Chandigarh, has the approval for 100 MBBS seats, but the course is yet to begin. It had received the go-ahead to build a 100-bed medical college in Sarangpur last year but the project is still under construction. This would be PGIMER's first foray into undergraduate teaching after decades of offering only postgraduate courses, such as Doctor of Medicine (MD) and Master of Surgery (MS). PGIMER's Sarangpur nod came from the institute's apex body, chaired by Union health and family welfare minister Jagat Prakash Nadda. The UT approval fits into a larger Central push to expand medical education capacity. In her 2025 budget speech, Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman had set a target of adding 75,000 medical seats nationally over five years. GMCH, a 1,047-bed tertiary care hospital, currently has 150 MBBS seats, 155 in MD/MS and seven in super specialty doctorate of medicine (DM) seats across cardiology, neonatology, and pulmonary critical care and sleep medicine. The expansion has been in the pipeline for a while. In 2025, the health secretary had said the department was targeting a 27% increase in MBBS and PG seats over five years, with the engineering wing preparing cost estimates for the academic block ahead of vetting by the standing finance committee. Last year, GMCH had also approached the NMC for a 3% seat increase to accommodate the Supreme Court's order on OBC reservation in admissions, but wasn't given the approval. Officials said the reservation would be implemented in a staggered manner, in line with UT norms. Set up in 1991 on 36.85 acres, GMCH was established after the Union Territory administration sought to give Chandigarh students a route into medical education that domicile rules in other states had denied them. The college, affiliated with Panjab University, received Medical Council of India recognition in 1998 with 50 seats. It now serves patients from Chandigarh and neighbouring Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir, and figures among the country's top 25 medical institutions. The hospital is expanding further, with a 283 bed trauma and emergency block and a 251-bed mother and child carecentre under construction....