Hyderabad: Government doctors’ associations have strongly opposed a reported proposal to increase the retirement age of the teaching faculty in state-run medical colleges from 65 to 70 years, warning that the move would block recruitment, delay promotions and affect the career prospects of thousands of young doctors.
The Telangana Senior Resident Doctors Association (T-SRDA), Telangana Junior Doctors Association (T-JUDA), Healthcare Reforms Doctors Association (HRDA) and members of the Federation of All India Medical Association (FAIMA) have issued statements urging the government to withdraw the proposal. They warned that if the proposal receives approval, doctors may resort to protests and strikes.
According to the associations, Telangana has 2,786 vacant faculty positions across government medical colleges. During the recent Medical and Health Services Recruitment Board recruitment drive, only 364 of the 607 assistant professor posts could be filled, while 243 had to be carried forward.
Dr Karthik N., assistant professor and representative of HRDA Telangana, said that any move to increase the retirement age would seriously undermine the career prospects of thousands of young specialists and adversely affect the long-term growth and sustainability of medical academia.
The association argued that extending the retirement age would create stagnation in promotions of assistant professors, associate professors and professors, while reducing opportunities for senior residents and newly qualified specialists aspiring to join academic medicine.
Doctors also described the proposal as an indication of failures in workforce planning and recruitment. In a joint statement, they said, “The government’s reliance on raising the retirement age is a clear admission of administrative failure. Instead of fixing a broken, slow-moving recruitment machinery, they are choosing to plug the vacancy gap by blocking the career progression of the next generation.”
FAIMA national president Dr Srinath D. highlighted the difficulties faced by young specialists. “There are 1,200 senior residents (2025 batch), who finished seniorship in April. We are fully eligible to join as assistant professors, but regular recruitment is dragging on and contract jobs have been halted with no extensions.”
“On the other side, nearly 400 NEET-SS aspirants have been left stranded for over three months waiting for counselling. Due to these overlapping systemic failures, young doctors are being pushed into severe financial and mental distress. While the government considers raising the retirement age to 70, the next generation of specialists is left sitting idle on the bench,” he said.
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