The nature of the proposed takeover of the Pariyaram Medical College, governed by a CPI(M)-controlled cooperative society, by the State government has once again turned the spotlights on the institution.
The stage is apparently set for some sparring between the ruling United Democratic Front (UDF) and the CPI(M). The latest to fire a salvo was former Minister for Cooperation and Communist Marxist Party (CMP) leader M.V. Raghavan.
The medical college was the brain child of Mr. Raghavan and he was the chairman of the Kerala State Cooperative Hospital Complex and Centre for Advanced Medical Services (KSCHC & CAMS) which controlled the hospital and the medical college, till he was ousted by a CPI(M)-controlled panel in a controversial election on September 23, 2007.
Mr. Raghavan said here on Monday that the director board of the KSCHC & CAMS be disbanded and threatened to quit the UDF if the government failed to do so.
He was in favour of appointing an administrator till a new director got elected by society members enrolled before September 2007.
Mr. Raghavan was responding to a recent statement by CPI(M) leader and medical college society chairman M.V. Jayarajan that the proposed takeover would not be opposed if all the employees were absorbed as government employees. Given the fact that the CPI(M)-controlled director board had recruited a large number of party loyalists as employees in the medical college and other institutions under it, Mr. Jayarajan’s rider
was unlikely to go unopposed.
Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) secretary Satheeshan Pacheni had stated in public that the UDF government’s goal was not to turn the ‘illegally recruited’ activists of the Democratic Youth Federation of India into government employees.
The proposed takeover of the medical college had been in the air since the UDF high-power committee recently decided to recommend government takeover of the Pariyaram and Kochi medical colleges in the cooperative sector.
The LDF’s takeover of the administration of the medical college on February 9, 1997, was initially for a period of two years. But it extended till its reversal by the then UDF government with the passage of the Pariyaram Medical College and Hospital (Transfer for Administration) Bill on November 29, 2001.
At the heart of the political controversy over the takeover and its subsequent reversal was the dual identity of the medical college which was originally conceived by its promoters as two institutions — KSCHC & CAMS, a cooperative society that was to run the hospital complex and the Academy of Medical Sciences (ACME), registered under the Societies Registration Act, 1860, that would control the medical college.
The 1997 takeover of the management of the medical college glossed the dual identity issue by setting up a board of control to manage the KSCHC & CAMS and ACME. The board then had the powers of both directors board of the KSCHC & CAMS and the governing body of ACME.
