Don’t spare colleges that lack facilities, HC tells MCI

‘Impose compensatory cost on per student basis for unaddressed deficiencies’

September 09, 2017 11:15 pm | Updated 11:15 pm IST - CHENNAI

Evolving a legal principle to ensure accountability of private medical colleges which do not rectify infrastructural or instructional deficiencies pointed out either by a Committee of Inspectors or Visitors of the Medical Council of India (MCI), the Madras High Court has suggested that compensatory costs should be imposed on those institutions at the rate of ₹ 2 lakh for every postgraduate student and ₹ 1 lakh for every undergraduate student passing out of them.

Stating that the MCI adopts a soft approach against such institutions and ends up punishing the students by refusing to register their degrees, the court said: “If the various measures and options followed by the MCI are not producing desired results, perhaps time has come to evolve a legal principle and fasten accountability on the medical college/institution concerned. The power to do so is clearly available both under Sections 17 and 19 of the [MCI] Act of 1956.”

A Division Bench of Justices Nooty Ramamohana Rao (since retired) and S.M. Subramanian said that the State government could recover the costs, imposed by the MCI, annually from the defaulting medical colleges through the Director of Medical Education and disburse the amount to the students concerned as a measure of compensation after deducting ₹10,000 with respect to every undergraduate student and ₹ 25,000 each from the postgraduate students.

“The money so withheld by the State government shall not be appropriated by it for any other purpose but must be exclusively spent for upgrading the infrastructure in one or more than one medical college administered by it,” the judges said. The observations were made while dismissing a batch of writ appeals filed by the MCI against a single judge’s order to Tamil Nadu Medical Council to register the postgraduate degrees obtained by a group of doctors.

Victimising students

The council had refused to register their degrees on the ground that the colleges where they had studied had failed to rectify certain deficiencies. Holding that such refusal was not proper, the Division Bench pointed out that the students could not be punished for non rectification of deficiencies since they had pursued the courses in the colleges only after the MCI had accorded Letter of Permission (LoP) to the institutions.

In spite of infrastructural and instructional defects said to have been noticed by the MCI, the students could still make the grade by competing with their peers who have pursued the same course from other medical institutions in the State where there were no such deficiencies. The instructional and infrastructural deficiencies pointed out by the MCI have not come in their way at all and their study and performance at the university examinations was not greatly impacted, the judges said.

“However, we are pained to notice that without rectifying or remedying the deficiencies, the medical institutions are allowed to go ahead and permit their students to complete the course of study. The MCI is required to act in time and not to wait till the very last minute when the students would be left with very little time or chance to enjoy the benefits... The students cannot be subjected to the humiliating experience of waiting in the wings for years together,” the judges said.

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