The Employees’ State Insurance Corporation (ESIC) has invited applications for 783 undergraduate medical and nursing seats reserved for the children of insured workers, for the 2026-27 academic session. The seats fall under the Ward of Insured Person (IP) quota, and the last date to apply for the mandatory Ward of IP Certificate is June 21, 2026.
The 783 seats break down into 695 MBBS seats, 28 BDS seats, and 60 B.Sc Nursing seats. They are spread across 22 medical, dental, and nursing institutions, including ESIC’s own medical colleges and select state government medical colleges that reserve seats for wards of insured persons. ESIC, which functions under the Ministry of Labour and Employment, has earmarked the seats provisionally for now.
The biggest draw for families is cost. Students admitted under the quota pay an annual tuition fee of just ₹24,000 for MBBS and BDS courses, and ₹10,000 for the B.Sc Nursing course. No capitation fee or donation is permitted under the category. For a worker’s family, that fee structure puts a professional medical degree within reach in a way the open market rarely does.
“These seats ensure affordable medical and nursing education for ESI families,” ESIC noted in its admission notice, framing the quota as one of its flagship welfare initiatives.
Eligibility is tightly defined. The parent must be a registered Insured Person under the ESI Act and must have been an active contributor to the ESI Scheme as on September 30, 2025. The applicant must be a dependent child of the insured person and have appeared for NEET (UG) 2026. Male candidates must be under 21 years of age as of March 8, 2026. Unmarried female dependents face no upper age limit under the ESI Act provisions.
Admissions run through the centralised counselling process administered by the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS), via the Medical Counselling Committee, based on NEET UG 2026 rank and college preferences. Before any of that, applicants must secure a valid Ward of IP Certificate. The certificate application is fully online through the IP portal on the ESIC website, and candidates have to upload supporting documents and clear an OTP verification tied to the insured person’s registered mobile number.
For the HR and payroll function, the announcement serves as a reminder that ESI compliance offers benefits employees often do not know about. The ESI Scheme, established under the ESI Act of 1948 and now folded into the Social Security Code 2020, already covers medical care, sickness benefit, and maternity benefit for crores of registered workers. The education quota is one of its lesser-publicised arms, and awareness tends to be patchy on factory floors and in smaller establishments.
ESIC has asked employers and its own field offices to spread the word and help workers’ families complete the process before the window shuts. That puts a small but real action item on HR teams in ESI-covered units. Flagging the scheme to eligible employees, and helping them confirm that dependent details and mobile numbers are correctly updated in ESIC records, can be the difference between a worker’s child making the counselling list or missing it.
