The Supreme Court order striking down an amendment to the AIIMS Act used to ease out Dr P Venugopal as Director may be a blow for Anbumani Ramadoss, but the Union Health Minister is unlikely to be deterred. Since he began his eventful tenure, the Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK) leader — whose sole qualification was being the son of PMK founder S Ramadoss and being aligned to the powerful DMK — has climbed from obscurity to national recognition on the strength of his unfailing ability to court controversy:BOLLYWOOD: Be it smoking, drinking or eating junk food, Ramadoss has trained his guns on the film industry. He has taken on biggies Amitabh Bachchan and Shah Rukh Khan and advised them against doing scenes showing them either smoking or drinking, saying it encourages youngsters to pick up the vices. He even and hinted that Saif Ali Khan’s rumoured “heart attack” was brought upon by his fondness for a brand of chips. He ensured that smoking was banned in movies and on the small screen. While Shah Rukh has been candid about what he thinks of Ramadoss’s opinions, even the otherwise reticent Bachchan has taken him on, writing in his blog: “Our intoxication, Minister, is in the credibility we bring to a drunken scene without being literally drunk, not to propagate alcoholism.” However, the Minister is not bothered, content with the WHO Director General’s Special Award for Tobacco Control. At the WHO award ceremony, in fact, he hinted he had found his next frontier in the war against tobacco: homes. “We are going to take stringent measures against smoking in public places. in fact any place where there are employees,” Ramadoss said. “Even at home, if you smoke and there is a maid present, action can be taken. If you have to smoke, then go to the roads.” COLAS: Soon after the Centre for Science and Environment released a report showing high levels of pesticides in soft drinks, Ramadoss dismissed the findings as unsubstantiated in Parliament. His remarks raised a furore, and Ramadoss later backtracked, saying colas were bad for health, with or without the pesticides. Again, his advice was to celebrities, like stars and sportspersons, to stop advertising the same. SEX: Ramadoss’s party PMK was the first to raise moral objection to actress Khusboo’s comments on premarital sex. Questioned about the same, he tried to defend his party. “We need many more Khusboos to talk about safe sex to the country’s youth. But you cannot propagate sex outside or prior to marriage,” he said. “We have to remember that we are Indians and we have still not reached a point where we are comfortable discussing sex openly. It is not that we Indians don’t have sex. It’s just that we don’t talk about it.”RAMDEV: Ramadoss questioned the yoga guru’s claims of curing AIDS and cancer through yoga, saying such things which are not scientifically and clinically validated should not be propagated. The yoga guru was also served a notice to stop making false claims about the curative powers of yoga. Ramadoss set off another furore when he said samples of ayurvedic formulations seized from, what was said to be a pharmacy run by Ramdev, carried “traces of human and animal remains”. MCI: The Minister drew severe criticism for his proposal to bring the Medical Council of India (MCI), which has been an autonomous body for many years, under the direct control of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. The council determines courses of study in medical colleges, inspects examinations and ensures maintenance of a register of medical practitioners in the country. A parliamentary standing committee on health slammed Ramadoss over the proposal to end the MCI’s autonomy. BIHAR: At a meeting of the American Association of Physicians of Indian origin, Ramadoss set off another controversy when he blamed “a doctor from Bihar” as the reason for UK derecognising Indian medical degrees in the 1970s as he did not know where the spleen was. The nation-wide stir that resulted forced the Minister to apologise publicly, saying: “It (Medicine) is a noble profession and I respect everyone coming from any state — be it Bihar or UP.” CRICKET: The Minister has pulled up the Indian Premier League (IPL) for “promoting” liquor through surrogate advertising—liquor baron Vijay Mallya’s team is called ‘Royal Challengers’ (also the name of a whiskey brand owned by his UB Group). Ramadoss has promised to take up the issue with the Information and Broadcasting Ministry. His remark came just a day after the Supreme Court rejected a PIL seeking that ‘Royal Challengers’ not be allowed to play under that name.
