Govt to set up body to oversee medical education

New Delhi: The government proposes to establish an umbrella body to oversee medical education in the country and to prevent scams of the kind that have hit the Medical Council of India (MCI), Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad said on Tuesday.

Once the National Council for Human Resources in Health "comes into being, it will take care of everything", Azad said while responding to a calling attention motion in the Rajya Sabha on irregularities in the functioning of the MCI in giving approval to medical colleges.

Noting that the government "was required to take the state governments on board" he said the draft bill on creating the council had been circulated to the states and union territories, 13 of whom had responded.

"We are reminding the others and will go ahead once their responses are received," he said.

Azad said the need for the council was felt after a parliamentary standing committee had shot down key elements of a law that the government wanted to bring in 2005 to tighten the functioning of the MCI by amending the existing act of 1956.

"We wanted that there be not more than two terms for the (MCI's) president and vice president. The standing committee said this was unconstitutional. The power of the government to dissolve the MCI was not accepted.

"The power to remove the president, the vice president and the members of the executive council was not accepted. The power to issue directives to the MCI was also not accepted," Azad pointed out.

Earlier, in a statement made in the house, Azad said medical education in the country needed to be reformed to enable the MCI to function in a "fair and objective manner".

"Our first and immediate concern should be to restore the credibility of the MCI and to enable (it) to function in a fair and objective manner and also to restore the confidence of those involved in medical education in the country," he said.

"The government is examining several possible avenues to achieve these objectives taking into account both the present legal status as well as those essential elements of reform that would be necessary," he added.

The MCI has been in the eye of a storm ever since its president, Ketan Desai, was arrested on charges of accepting a bribe of Rs 2 crore for granting recognition to a private medical college in Punjab.

A court here Monday dismissed Desai's bail plea.