The Indian Medical Association (IMA), Mangaluru branch, and various other associations of specialist doctors have strongly criticised the Central Government’s move to replace the Medical Council of India (MCI) through the National Medical Commission and said the government cannot do away self-regulation of the profession.
Speaking to presspersons here on Wednesday, IMA Mangaluru President A. Amritha Bhandary said the Centre, through the Niti Aayog, has posted the draft National Medical Commission Bill, 2016, on Aayog’s website and invited objections to it. She said organisations of different specialties of modern scientific medicine have decided to oppose the proposal in totality.
IMA Member Srinivas Kakkillayya noted that every profession in the country is governed through self-regulation by an Act of Parliament. The Centre claims that MCI regulating medical profession and education amounts to conflict of interest. If that is the case, so would be the case with other professions, including lawyers and Bar Council of India, chartered accountants and Institute of Chartered Accountants of India.
In a release, IMA said that the draft Bill is based on the report prepared by a committee comprising bureaucrats who do not have any medicine background. As such, it cannot be accepted at all, the Association said.
The committee also said that the present election process of appointing regulators is inherently saddled with compromises and the system must be discarded. IMA said that if that was the case, the government should have devised a fool-proof election system instead of entirely eliminating the MCI. Dr. Kakkillayya wondered about the reported statement of a joint Parliamentary Standing Committee which had stated that there has been unbridled corruption in MCI. If that was the case, the government should have slapped criminal cases against those concerned; eliminating the MCI is not the solution.
IMA said every other country has similar self-regulation bodies, supported by Acts of legislatures concerned, to govern different professions. MCI, governed by the Medical Council of India Act, 1956, is on a par with international practices and should not be scrapped.
Satish Bhat, another member of IMA, Mangaluru, said MCI’s decisions are not sacrosanct; they have to be approved by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare as well as the Union Cabinet as the case may be. Hence, there is no truth in the allegations of corruption or nepotism.
IMA is also opposed to appointment of 20 members to NMC, out of which only one would be a medical profession. Nowhere in the world such practice exists, it said.
Dr. Kakkillaya said professionals have resorted to different kinds of protests, including filing objections to the Bill, online campaigns etc. If the government does not relent, doctors would be forced to take to the streets, he said.
