Pull gives push to MMC

MUMBAI, May 2: A Deputy secretary in Chief Minister Manohar Joshi's office is pressuring the Maharashtra Medical Council (MMC) to grant a p...

MUMBAI, May 2: A Deputy secretary in Chief Minister Manohar Joshi’s office is pressuring the Maharashtra Medical Council (MMC) to grant a permanent registration certificate to his daughter though she has not completed the statutory internship of one year.

In a communication to the registrar of the Maharashtra Medical Council on the official letter-head of the Chief Minister’s secretariat, deputy secretary B A Pande said his daughter, Smita, had been given provisional registration by the MMC on May 8, 1996. As per a Bombay University letter of July 8, 1996, the Lokmanya Tilak Medical College had condoned 55 days of her internship but deemed that she had completed a year as required.

“In view of the aforesaid circumstances, you are requested kindly to grant her a permanent registration certificate,” Pande urged the MMC.

Pande’s letter along with the stand taken by the LTM College as well as the Bombay University was discussed at length at the two-day executive committee meeting of the Maharashtra Medical Council. “While Pande’s plea was rejected, the decision of the LTM College dean as well as that of the Bombay University was strongly criticised at the meeting,” according to a senior Medical Council member.

Most of the members felt that it was pressure tactics on the part of the official in the Chief Minister’s secretariat. “We feel that official stationery should not be allowed to be used for such purposes,” they said. They remarked that it was wrong on the part of the college administration as well as the university to waive the internship period. “It violated the rules prescribed by the Medical Council of India,” they pointed out. In fact, in view of repeated requests from erring students, the MMC had referred the dispute to the Medical Council of India (MCI) for opinion. “On internship, the MCI had made it clear that at the most a period of 30 days, and that too for exceptional reasons, can be condoned,” the MMC member said. Medical Council of India deputy secretary K K Arora informed the MMC that the Council’s executive committee was of the firm opinion that no reduction in the period of 12 months’ compulsory rotating internship as envisaged in the undergraduate medical curriculum can be allowed under any circumstances. However, a marginal adjustment not exceeding 30 days should be made under very exceptional circumstances with the approval of the MCI, the committee stated.

In the present case, it appears that the LTM College dean as well as the authorities of the Bombay University completely ignored the MCI guidelines. In fact, when disputes of this nature were in the past referred to the MCI, it had conveyed identical views to the registrars of all the universities and the deans of all the medical colleges in the country.