Mumbai-The Mumbai Medical Education Department recently granted permission to the Employees' State Insurance Corporation (ESIC) to set up a 50 MBBS seat- medical college on the premises of the ESIC Hospital in Andheri East. On this, Abhilasha Jha, regional director of the ESIC, said the first batch will be admitted in the 2025-26 academic year and the fees will be Rs 24,000 per year, one of the lowest. This will be the first central government organisation to open a medical college in Mumbai. In addition, the centre has also approved a 50-seat undergraduate medical college at GT Hospital. According to theHTnews report, the ESIC Hospital in Andheri was gutted in a massive fire in December 2018, in which eleven people died and 146 others, including five infants, were injured. Subsequently, most of the hospital's services were shifted to the ESIC Hospital in Kandivali. Following the fire, it was discovered that the hospital lacked a fire department NOC and that 20 unauthorised LPG cylinders were stored inside the building. In this regard, the health minister Suresh Shetty, who was also the Andheri East MLA, said, “The medical college was sanctioned when Oscar Fernandes was labour minister; he granted ₹500 crore to build it into a model superspeciality hospital. The fire in 2018 delayed things. I am glad it is finally starting now”. The ESIC complex in Andheri has a 300-bed hospital, of which 100 beds are currently operational. The remaining hospitals will be operational soon, and the construction and interior decoration of the campus will be completed by December. Mumbai currently has government and civic medical colleges at Nair, KEM, Sion, Cooper, and JJ hospitals.