New Delhi, June 1 -- Union labour minister Mansukh Mandaviya on Saturday said that the Centre would upgrade all hospitals of the Employees' State Insurance Corporations (ESIC) with 200 beds or more into full-fledged medical colleges as part of an ongoing expansion drive. The government also proposes to reserve 40% of seats in these medical colleges for wards of employees with ESIC's health insurance cover, the minister said while inaugurating a 30-bed facility at Kala Amb in Himachal Pradesh. "40% of seats in these institutions will be reserved for the wards of insured persons, ensuring greater educational opportunities for workers' families," Mandaviya said. The state-backed ESIC, which provides free, no-cash-ceiling healthcare to enrolled workers across the country, is in the process of setting up medical colleges in Mumbai's Andheri, Delhi's Basaidarapur, Assam's Guwahati, Madhya Pradesh's Indore, Rajasthan's Jaipur, Punjab's Ludhiana, Gujarat's Naroda-Bapunagar and Noida as well as Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh. Set up under the Employees' State Insurance Act 1948, ESIC covers all formal-sector workers with a monthly salary of Rs.21,000 or less. It currently runs 165 hospitals countrywide, including medical colleges, and a chain of 1,574 dispensaries, but these aren't sufficient to cover workers in all districts of the country....