State urges PCI to halt new pharmacy colleges for next five years

Mumbai: In a move aimed at curbing the unchecked expansion of pharmacy colleges, the Maharashtra government has formally urged the Pharmacy Council of India (PCI) to halt approvals for new institutions in the state for the next five years. The demand stems from a sharp rise in unfilled seats and growing apprehension over the quality of education in existing colleges.

The situation has reached a critical point. In the 2024–25 academic year alone, over 26,000 seats in pharmacy courses remained vacant — 14,000 in Bachelor of Pharmacy (B Pharmacy) programmes and 12,400 in Diploma in Pharmacy (D Pharmacy) courses.

During a recent visit to Delhi, Higher and Technical Education Minister Chandrakant Patil, accompanied by senior officials, met Union Health Minister JP Nadda to present a detailed master plan for reforming pharmacy education in Maharashtra. The plan strongly recommends a moratorium on new college approvals and a strategic shift towards improving infrastructure, teaching standards, and industry collaboration in existing institutions.

A senior official in the department said the presentation included multiple new initiatives to arrest the decline in quality. Chief among them was a call to freeze the establishment of new pharmacy colleges and prevent existing ones from expanding their intake capacity for the next five years. “We must prioritise quality over quantity,” the official noted.

The proposed reforms also advocate a curriculum overhaul to better align with current pharmaceutical industry needs and employment trends. There is a strong emphasis on student development, with recommendations for structured internship programmes, expanded research opportunities, and robust career counselling systems.

To steer these changes, the state’s Technical Education Department has formed a committee comprising academic and industry experts to draft a roadmap for 2025–2031. The state’s presentation to the central government highlighted the disproportionate rise of private colleges in low-demand areas, often lacking adequate infrastructure and leading to subpar academic and employment outcomes.

The ministerial delegation included additional chief secretary B Venugopal Reddy, director of Technical Education Vinod Mohitkar, and director of the Board of Technical Education Pramod Naik.