By IANS,
New Delhi : Three weeks after Medical Council of India (MCI) president Ketan Desai was arrested on corruption charges, President Pratibha Patil Thursday signed an ordinance dissolving the statutory regulatory body.
A seven-member body will replace MCI and serve for a period of one year, Health Secretary Sujatha Rao said.
Some of the committee members are like to be former director of AIIMS P. Venugopal and senior cardiologists K.K. Talwar and M.S. Valiathan.
The cabinet had discussed the ordinance Thursday, which had then gone to the law ministry for consultations.
After the president’s assent, the health ministry will have to bring out a notification.
The government decided to bring the ordinance after a crisis hit the regulatory body after its president was arrested April 22 by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for allegedly taking a bribe of Rs.2 crore to recognise a medical college in Punjab though it did not meet MCI standards. Desai had given his resignation to the health ministry Wednesday.
The MCI, a statutory body tasked to oversee the standards of medical education in India, grants recognition to medical degrees, gives accreditation to medical colleges, registers medical practitioners and monitors medical practice in the country.
On Friday, Sujatha Rao had said that the 1956 act which set up the body did not empower the government “which has to work within a certain legal framework”.
“The government should have power to give directions to the MCI for what it has to do. If they do something wrong, we can take action,” Rao told media persons.
“There is a crisis. Our inability to respond to it brought out the shortcomings in the Medical Council Act,” she said.
The health secretary had also said that a draft law to regulate medical education in the country would be ready within a month, but that an interim measure would also be taken – hinting towards the ordinance.