Aditi tandon
Tribune news service
New Delhi, September 24
India’s new medical education regulator, the National Medical Commission (NMC), will take effect from Friday and the Center will abolish the 87-year-old Medical Council of India, which was marred by corruption in its last years.
The Center notified the 33-member NMC on Thursday evening saying it would go into effect on September 25. With the notification, the MCI board of governors is automatically dissolved. The BoG was appointed four years ago to manage MCI’s affairs while the MCI remained dissolved. On Thursday, the MCI was abolished.
The notification appoints Suresh Chandra Sharma, HoD, ENT, AIIMS, New Delhi, as chair of the NMC, which will have four autonomous boards to regulate undergraduate medical education, graduate medical education, medical evaluation and qualifications and ethics and the medical record.
The development means that all provisions of the NMC Law of 2019 will take effect as of Friday, including the regulation of fees on 50 percent of seats in private medical colleges and universities considered; end of inspections for university renewals; commencement of senior MBBS exam with three purposes: licensing exam to pass MBBS to issue a license to practice medicine; entrance examination for graduate medical education and entrance examination for foreign medical graduates. Called the National Exit Test, this senior MBBS exam will eventually replace the existing National Cum Entry Eligibility Test (NEET) for PG and the Foreign Medical Graduate Test.
The NMC will also develop guidelines for a new group of non-MBBS mid-level health care providers, such as nurses and pharmacists with limited rights to dispense drugs.
The notice names the chairs of four autonomous boards under the NMC as follows: Aruna Vanikar, HoD Pathology; GR Doshi, Institute of Kidney Diseases, Ahmadabad (UG medical board); MK Ramesh, Director of Surgery at Bangalore Medical College and Research Institute (PG medical education board); Achal Gulati, Principal Director, BR Ambedkar Medical College, Delhi; and BN Gangadhar, Director of NIMHANS Bangalore as Chairman of the Medical Ethics and Registration Board.
The new regulator has significant representation from the region with PGI Chandigarh director Jagat Ram among 11 full-time members with a three-year tenure as of Friday.
VC of Baba Farid University of Health Sciences, Faridkot, Raj Bahadur; VC of Atal University of Medicine and Research, Himachal Pradesh, Surender Kashyap, and VC of Pandit Bhagwat Dayal Sharma University of Health Sciences, Rohtak, OP Kalra are among the 10 Vice Chancellors appointed to be part of NMC membership for two years, after which there will be a rotation to accommodate VCs from other states.
Mukut Minz from the Department of Urology at Fortis Mohali has been appointed as a part-time member of the UG Board of Medical Education.
The Commission’s journey began in 2016 when NITI Aayog presented the first draft.
