The Madras High Court on Friday declared as illegal a host of postgraduate and postgraduate diploma courses offered by Tamil Nadu Dr. MGR Medical University without obtaining the Centre’s approval as required under Section 10(A) of the Indian Medical Council Act, 1956.
Justice S.S. Sundar “condemned” the State government-run university for conducting the courses in flagrant violation of the law and directed it to pay costs of ₹5 lakh to the School Education Department within four weeks, so that the money could be used for improving the infrastructure of needy government schools.
The judge also restrained the university from continuing to conduct the illegal courses either directly or through medical colleges affiliated to it. If the university is permitted to offer or conduct such courses, people would be misled into believing that holders of the unrecognised diplomas/postgraduate degrees are experts, he said.
The order was passed on a writ petition filed by the Doctors’ Welfare Association of Tamil Nadu (DWAT), represented by its general secretary K. Srinivasan, in May last year. The judge agreed with the petitioner’s counsel, P. Ebenezer Paul, that a State-run university too should follow the requirements of a Central law.
In its petition, the association had urged the court to prevent the university from offering the postgraduate diploma course in palliative medicine, the MD-family medicine course through distance education and the one-year fellowships such as HIV medicine, occupational health, clinical immunology, palliative medicine and sexual medicine.
It also wanted the university to be prevented from offering two-year courses in medical genetics, critical care medicine, clinical diabetology, ultrasound (obstetrics and gynaecology) or any other unauthorised PG degree, diploma, certificate or fellowship in medical sciences course for which an MBBS degree is the requirement for admission.
Justice S. Vaidyanathan had admitted the writ petition and sought the response of the university as well as Medical Council of India (MCI). While MCI filed a counter affidavit virtually supporting the case of the petitioner and urged the court to allow the writ petition, the university claimed that the courses offered by it were pefectly legal.
Relying upon the provisions of the Tamil Nadu MGR University Act of 1987 and permissions granted by its governing council, the univerrsity contended that it was empowered to offer degree and diploma courses in medical sciences, depending upon the need for such courses, even without obtaining the approval of the Centre or MCI.
Rejecting the contention, the judge said that the Central enactment would prevail over the State law and that a Division Bench of the High Court had in Dr.V. Balaji versus Union of India (2008) stressed upon the necessity for every medical course to have been approved by the Centre as required under the IMC Act.
