The Health and Family Welfare Ministry has asked the Union Urban Development Ministry to withdraw the notifications of the Medical Council of India (MCI) on common entrance tests for graduate and postgraduate courses, as they have been printed without authentication.
The two gazette notifications were printed on December 21 by the Department of Publications that comes under the Urban Development Ministry. All such notifications are published by this department and printed by the Government of India Printing Presses.
A gazette notification is an authorised legal document of the government containing the mode of operations under the law of the land.
In a letter to his counterpart in the Urban Development Ministry, Union Health and Family Welfare Secretary K. Chandramouli on Friday last sought to know how the notifications were published and printed without authentication by the Ministry as required under rule. He pointed out that the notifications were neither vetted nor authenticated by the Joint Secretary concerned in the Ministry, and that the “mistake” of the Department of Publications had “left us [Ministry of Health and Family Welfare] embarrassed” and should be withdrawn.
The Urban Development Ministry, on its part, informed the Health Ministry that the issue would be looked into. The notifications were signed by the Additional Secretary of the MCI when sent for printing.
Declared invalid
It may be mentioned that the publication programme is executed as per the Government of India (Allocation of Business Rules) issued from time to time by the Cabinet Secretariat. For any gazette notification to be published and printed, the notification has to be authenticated by a joint secretary-level officer of the Ministry concerned along with a covering letter. In the case of the two MCI notifications, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare was not even aware of the notifications until the newspapers reported it. The Ministry subsequently declared the two notifications as “invalid” as these were not issued as per law.
The Department of Publications is headed by the Controller of Publications with the assistance of two Assistant Controllers, one financial officer and an assistant director (official language).
