CHENNAI: Why shouldn’t the Centre ask every State in the country to set up a medical college in each district?
This was the question that Justice N Kirubakaran, who also wondered how students scoring low marks in Board exams are able to join medical courses in foreign institutions when those having more than 95 per cent in class 12 alone are able to get admissions to MBBS courses in India.
“It is not understandable as to how moneyed persons, who get comparatively low marks, are allowed to get admission in foreign medical colleges or universities with lesser marks and they are able to get medical degrees which are also permitted by the Medical Council of India (MCI) by recognising degrees granted by those foreign institutions. Only meritorious students should be allowed to enter any medical college as the lives of the patients or citizens are with the prospective doctors. Further, our country needs more doctors and hence urgent measures have to be taken to establish more government medical colleges so that medical education is not commercialised,” he said.
The judge was passing interim orders on a writ petition from Thamarai Selvan, who did his MBBS at the West Indies-based International University of the Health and Sciences, St Christopher and Nevis. He completed the course in 2011 and cleared the MCI’s screening test for Indian nationals with foreign medical qualifications in 2016.
But, Thamarai Selvan’s application for provisional registration certificate was not considered by the Tamil Nadu Medical Council. Hence, the present petition.
Pointing out that the institution has been recognised by the Medical Council of India and the candidate has only about 77 per cent marks in Class 12 board examinations, the court raised a set of questions, which included the number of medical graduates from foreign medical colleges who had taken screening tests conducted in the past 10 years, the number of students qualified to undergo compulsory rotatory residential internship and to get enrolled as doctors in the past 10 years.
The court also asked whether or not the Medical Council of India was aware that students who get less marks are able to get admission in foreign medical institutions in foreign countries and get medical degrees and whether allowing such students to get medical degrees will not go against the public interest.
Justice N Kirubakaran adjourned the petition hearing to April 10.