The Uttarakhand Medical Services Selection Board (UMSSB) has started a drive to recruit assistant professors in the government medical colleges of the State. After completing the screening process the board would start the process of interviews to select 339 assistant professors in various disciplines from August 16. The chairman of the UKSSB, Dr D S Rawat told The Pioneer that the board has made all the preparations for conducting the interviews of the candidates. He said that the process of interviews would start on August 16 and end on August 31. He informed that more than 800 candidates had applied for these posts but after checking the eligibility many applications were cancelled. The board had released the recruitment advertisements for 343 posts of Assistant Professors in three government medical colleges of the state in the month of March. Out of these posts 80 are reserved for Scheduled Castes (SC), four for Scheduled Tribes (ST), 47 for Other Backward Caste (OBC) and 29 for economically backward castes. The selected candidates would be appointed in the pay scale of Rs 67,700 to Rs 2,08,700 and would be deployed in the vacant posts in the government medical colleges of the state. In Uttarakhand there are four government medical colleges, the Government Doon Medical College, Medical College Haldwani, Veer Chandra Singh Garhwali Medical College Srinagar and Almora medical colleges.

 All these medical colleges are suffering from shortage of faculty. As per the National Medical Commission (NMC) there is a 30 per cent shortage of faculty in Srinagar and Almora medical colleges.