New Board of Governors appointed for MCI

New Delhi: The Board of Governors for the Medical Council of India
(MCI) has been reconstituted by the Union Ministry of Health and
Family Welfare.

Noted cardiologist Dr. K.K. Talwar has been appointed as the Chairman
of the new Board of Governors for the MCI. Dr. Talwar has been a
familiar figure at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS)
and has also been the Director of the Post Graduate Institute of
Medical Education and Research (PGIMER), Chandigarh.

Other members nominated on the board subsequent to the promulgation of
the ordinance extending the supersession of the MCI by another year
are Prof. K.S. Sharma from Tata Memorial Hospital, Prof Harbhajan
Singh Rassam from Max Hospital, Dr. Rajiv Chintaman Yeravdekar from
Symbiosis International University and Dr. Purushotham Lal, chairman
of Metro Hospital.

The term of the present members of the Board of Governors, headed by
Dr. S.K. Sarin, ends on May 14.

Also, another clause has been added to the functioning of the new
board that makes it necessary for all members to work as full-time
officials of the MCI.

A ministry official said that the governing body is supposed to be a
five member body and the names of other members are still being
finalized.

Sources have alleged that the ministry had been dissatisfied and upset
with the pace of work of the earlier board of governors led by Dr.
Sarin. The board had failed to increase the number of seats for
postgraduate medical courses to the desired level for the current
academic session.

Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad had also been miffed with the board
for its unilateral decision to introduce the controversial Common
Entrance Test (CET) for graduate and postgraduate medical academic
programmes in India.

The MCI and the health ministry had been on loggerheads over the
introduction of the test and the ministry had declared its
notification to be invalid.

According to the notification, a single entrance examination was to be
introduced that would be conducted for MBBS and MD courses offered by
all 271 medical colleges in the country, of which 138 are operated by
the government and 133 are under private management.

The health ministry had been put under a lot of pressure by state
governments such as those of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka to abandon the
idea for the CET.

The MCI board of governors and the health ministry had recently had
another tiff because of the board's decision to appoint a person of
their choice as the secretary.

The MCI, 1 77-year old body, had been dissolved after the then MCI
president Dr. Ketan Desai had been arrested by the Central Bureau of
Investigation (CBI) on charges of accepting bribe in return for giving
recognition to a medical college ion Punjab even though it hadn't met
the standards stipulated by the MCI.