President Pratibha Patil has given her assent to the Ordinance that seeks to extend the tenure of the Board of Governors of the Medical Council of India by another year.
A gazette notification in this regard was issued on Wednesday. The tenure of the Board was to expire on May 14. The extension was earlier approved at a meeting of the Union Cabinet last month. The Ordinance would have to be approved by Parliament in the Monsoon session.
The six-member body had replaced the erstwhile MCI last year following the arrest of its president Ketan Desai on April 22 last year by the CBI on charges of corruption.
The MCI, a statutory body, tasked to oversee the standards of medical education in India, grants recognition to medical degrees, gives accreditation to medical colleges, registers medical practitioners and monitors medical practice in the country.
The government had amended the Indian Medical Council Act, 1956, to insert an Article 3 (a) through an ordinance that authorised the government to intervene in matters of “national policy’’.
Reconstitution
The new gazette notification for the Indian Medical Council (Amendment) Ordinance, 2011 says that the Council will be reconstituted within two years from the date of supercession of the Council, instead of one year.
The term of the Board of Governors had been fixed for one year as the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare proposed to set up the National Commission for Human Resource in Health as an overarching regulatory body within this time. However, with the Commission yet to be set up, the Ministry decided to extend the term of the Board which has provision for seven members, though the existing Board has only six members.
And with some members of the Board, chaired by S.K. Sarin, expressing their desire to step down, the Board is expected to be re-constituted.
