New Delhi, Aug 2 (IANS) Easing of norms in medical colleges has resulted in addition of approximately 4,500 seats in MBBS courses, while nearly 6,400 seats have been increased at the post graduate level, Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad said Tuesday.

In a written reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha, the minister said the recent revision of guidelines by the Medical Council of India "has increased a total of 4,542 MBBS seats in 21 new medical colleges and 33 existing medical colleges during the academic year 2011-12".

Among the steps take to increase the number of seats for medical courses was reducing the change in teacher-student ratio from 1:1 to 1:2.

"These initiatives has resulted in increase of approximately 6,400 additional PG seats in various disciplines in medical colleges during the last two academic years 2010-11 and 2011-12," Azad said.

He added that 4,000 more PG seats are like to be increased as government has schemes for starting new PG disciplines and increasing PG seats by central funding.