After the death of over 30 children in 48 hours in Gorakhpur's BRD Medical College, the Yogi Adityanath government is now under fire for having slashed over 50% of its budgetary allocation towards medical education.
Earlier in July, the UP government announced that the budget allotted for the 14 state-run medical colleges, of which BRD Medical College is one, has been reduced from Rs 2,344 crore in 2016-17 to Rs 1,148 crore in 2017-18.
Out of this, the funds for BRDMC dropped from Rs 15.9 crore in 2016-17 to Rs 7.8 crore in 2017-18.
Particularly, the budgetary allocation for machinery and equipment was reduced from Rs 3 crore to Rs 75 lakh, reported the Times of India.
This is not a one-off case with just the BRDMC, when in fact all medical colleges across the state faced a similar fate. ToI reported that colleges in Kanpur and Allahabad also witnessed a dip in their allocations from Rs 15.9 crore last year to Rs 3.3 crore and Rs 4.2 crore respectively.