Engineers will need licence to practise

Thanks to pressure from the World Trade Organisation, the Government has come up with the radical reform of introducing a licence for engine...

Thanks to pressure from the World Trade Organisation, the Government has come up with the radical reform of introducing a licence for engineers to ‘‘practise’’ their profession.

The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), a statutory body which has been limited so far to overseeing engineering colleges, issued a public notice two days ago announcing that it has ‘‘decided to undertake the responsibility of registration of engineers.’’

Member Secretary of the AICTE, R S Nirjar, when contacted, said that this step was taken to ensure that India was ready to benefit from the WTO regime’s deadline of January 2005 for ‘‘cross-border movement of registered professionals.’’

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The decision to confer licences on engineers is in line with India’s strategy before the WTO of pressing for movement of registered professionals for temporary periods as the most desirable mode of delivery of services across countries.

Though engineers of various branches, including IT and civil engineering, constitute the largest professional sector in the country, they will not be able to undertake foreign assignments after January 2005 unless India puts in place by then a system of registering them.

This special measure needs to be taken only in the case of engineers as the councils regulating other professionals such as doctors, dentists, lawyers and architects already provide licences to them. (Therefore, a law graduate, for instance, cannot practise in a court as an advocate until he enrolls himself in the local bar council.) The AICTE notice published in newspapers on March 2 says that their enrolment shall entitle the ‘‘registered engineers to use the title and style of ‘engineer.’ Only such registered engineers shall be eligible for obtaining a licence from the AICTE to practise the profession of engineering.’’

As a corollary of the licence, the notice adds that the AICTE shall make it ‘‘obligatory for the registered engineers to adhere to prescribed etiquettes and code of ethics.’’ In other words, the AICTE has assumed disciplinary jurisdiction over registered engineers much like how other professionals are subject to the control of their respective councils. But then those councils take penal action, including cancellation of the licence of an errant professional, on the basis of express powers conferred on them by the laws under which they were set up. Since the AICTE does not have any such statutory support, legal experts doubt whether its assumption of penal powers or for that matter the power to register engineers is sustainable.

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Nirjar defends the AICTE by saying that it is acting under the residuary powers provided by its Act. ‘‘In any case, what is important is that we have with the consent of the Government decided to register engineers and deal with its consequences,’’ the member secretary said. ‘‘If there is any legal lacuna, the law can be amended or a fresh law can be enacted.’’