MCI urges compulsory renewal for allopaths

The aim is to ensure that doctors keep up with the latest developments in modern medicine. The idea has been welcomed by the Maharashtra Medical Council (MMC) vice-president Dr Sudhakar Deshpande as the "confusion about registration will finally be resolved."

However, the Indian Medical Association (IMA) President Dr F S Desai points to some practical problems in implementation, "It is a desirable proposition and we have already started conducting CMEs for the benefit of our members. But these CMEs can only be conducted in bigger cities like Mumbai, Pune etc. and not feasible in rural areas where there are hardly five allopaths per taluka."

Initially, when there were barely 2,000 doctors in Mumbai, the Maharashtra Medical Council (MMC) followed the system of lifelong registration. During an MCI election few years ago, one of the two presidential candidates filed a case alleging that bogus voting could take place. The candidate’s contention was that many of the doctors registered with the council could be dead, out of the country or otherwise untraceable which could lead to impersonation of candidates. Following this, the Bombay High Court ordered the renewal of registration by the state council.

In this system, the state council was supposed to get in touch with each registered doctor or issue newspaper advertisements. This lead to a lot of confusion about the status of doctors who had not renewed their registration. A certain amount charged from every doctor for the process of re-registration will also boost the financial status’ of the state council.