Health Ministry gets SC’s strong dose: don’t mess with MCI

The most shocking instance came in the case of six government medical colleges in Andhra Pradesh. On August 8, the Centre asked the MCI to inspect these colleges and then in eight days, even before the MCI had begun its job, it cleared these ‘‘as a one-time measure.’’

The Government cited several factors, infrastructure, age of the colleges, availability of doctors in the region to make its case.

However, saying that bypassing the MCI violates the MCI Act, Justice Shah’s bench put its foot down on standards and directed the MCI to inspect the 11 colleges within four weeks.

‘‘A small deficiency in the operation could prove fatal to the patient,’’ the court said restraining the Health Ministry from passing such orders in the future.

The MCI inspection puts a question mark over the fate of the students who have already been admitted in those colleges on the basis of the Centre’s allegedly illegal permission.

The bench also described as ‘‘annoying’’ a resolution passed against the MCI at a meeting on August 29 of state health ministers convened by Union Health Minister Sushma Swaraj seeking greater latitude in the faculty and infrastructure provided in government colleges.

The meeting of the Central Council of Health and Family Welfare resolved that ‘‘government medical colleges should not be equated with the institutions owned by private managements as the government colleges provide medical education at a lower cost to poor and meritorious students.’’ This prompted the bench to ask whether the Centre did not want the government colleges to comply even with ‘‘the minimum standards of medical education’’ as prescribed by the MCI.

Besides the six in Andhra Pradesh, the colleges that will be affected by today’s court orders are located in Madhya Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Sikkim. Restoring powers to the MCI, the Supreme Court today effectively followed up on what it did in November last year when it appointed an ad hoc committee of four eminent doctors to oversee its functioning. Then, the court had said that if any member of this committee encounters any practical or legal difficulty in the course of its work, it would be open to him to approach this court for appropriate orders through Salve. Accordingly, the ad hoc committee moved the court through Salve on September 5 alleging that the Government’s decision led to ‘‘an impairment of (its) independence’’ and an interference with MCI’s statutory duties.