NEW DELHI: The Medical Council of India (MCI) was extremely opaque in carrying out inspection of medical colleges, leading to a large number of complaints from most colleges, and had messed up the PG admissions this year, causing high number of vacant speciality seats after counselling.
These were some of the clinching points of a report submitted to the Union Health and Family Welfare Ministry by the Supreme Court appointed Oversight Committee, which led to the unceremonious dissolution of the country’s medical education regulator 10 days ago.
“We inform you with great distress that MCI is not following the instructions given to it by the OC and not furnishing the information desired by it from time to time,” said the report, a copy of which is with TNIE. The committee also said that the MCI showed “complete disregard for most of its orders and instructions”.
The Centre, through an ordinance last Wednesday, had notified that the MCI would be superseded with a seven-member Board Of Governors under Niti Aayog member (health) V K Paul.
Other members in the board include AIIMS-Delhi director Randeep Guleria, PGIMER-Chandigarh director Jagat Ram, NIMHANS- Bangalore director B N Gangadhar and Nikhil Tandon, professor, Department of Endocrinology and Metabolism, AIIMS, among others.The OC, which resigned in early September, was constituted in July last year and had been tasked with vetting all decisions and recommendations of the corruption-tainted MCI.
It was, however, peeved that none of its directions were followed by the body. The MCI, for instance, did not submit to it the list of assessors or inspectors who had inspected various medical colleges in 2017 and found faults with them.
“The OC observed that 59.82 per cent of the 351 representations received from medical colleges are related to disagreement or dissent by the college authorities against the assessment process/report,” the committee wrote to the government.
In response to an OC directive asking for the details of assessors, mechanism of evaluation and their full reports, the MCI declined to share the information saying it would be “too bulky” and would set a wrong precedent.
“It would also be akin to undermining the credibility of MCI assessors who are professors of government medical colleges,” the MCI had replied to the OC.
In addition, the MCI also did not follow the OC’s directions on taking urgent steps on filling gaps that led to a large number of vacant PG seats in medical colleges this year, resulting in wastage of “crucial speciality seats”, the committee said in its report submitted in July.
“The committee was formed for indefinite period of time. But they were so stressed by the malpractices in the MCI that they put in their papers in a year,” said a health ministry official. “In such a scenario, the only way left for us was to dissolve the MCI.”
Panel’s damning report
MCI was extremely opaque in carrying out inspection of medical colleges, leading to a large number of complaints from colleges
MCI was not following the instructions given to it by the Oversight Committee and not furnishing the information desired by it
MCI did not submit to OC the list of assessors or inspectors who had inspected various medical colleges in 2017
In response to OC directive asking for the details of assessors, mechanism of evaluation and their full reports, the MCI declined to share the information saying it would be “too bulky”
MCI did not follow OC’s directions on taking urgent steps on filling gaps that led to many vacant PG seats, resulting in wastage of speciality seats