Telangana promotes 319 Associate Professors to address faculty shortage in medical colleges

The Telangana Health Department has approved a one-time relaxation of promotion rules, enabling 319 Associate Professors to become Professors in government medical colleges. The move aims to address faculty shortages caused by the rapid expansion of medical colleges and increased student intake.

Hyderabad: To resolve critical faculty deficits in government medical colleges, the health department on Tuesday sanctioned a one-time waiver of routine promotional timelines to advance 319 Associate Professors in government teaching hospitals to full Professors for the 2025-26 panel year.

The Health Department sanctioned this through G.O.Rt.No. 328, which bypasses typical panel-year wait times to address shortage of faculty due to the State’s recent expansion of public medical infrastructure.

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Under Rule 6 of the Telangana State and Subordinate Service (TS&SS) Rules, 1996, the government has waived the restriction that limits promotional consideration to an officer’s specific assigned panel year. Through the new GO, Associate Professors from Clinical, Non-Clinical, and Super-Specialty medical disciplines who meet the mandatory three-year service criteria and were originally scheduled for consideration in the future 2026–27 and 2027–28 panel years are now pooled into the ongoing 2025–26 cycle for immediate promotion.

The decision follows a proposal from the Director of Medical Education (DME) citing acute staffing requirements.

Over the past several years, Telangana has expanded its medical education infrastructure by establishing 33 government medical colleges to ensure every district has a government medical institute.

The addition of new institutions, including eight colleges launched in 2024–25 and GMC Kodangal in 2025–26, and a sharp increase in UG and PG seat capacities, created an immediate demand for senior faculty to meet National Medical Commission (NMC) operational norms.