The Supreme Court today directed the Medical Council of India (MCI) to file its response by the end of March on the additional affidavit filed by the Centre for doing away with the screening test for Indians with medical degrees from the erstwhile Soviet Union for practicing medicine in India.The affidavit described the hardship faced by students and requested the Court to allow the government to issue a fresh notification extending the cut-off date to March 15, 2004. A bench comprising Chief Justice of India V.N. Khare and Justice S.H. Kapadia gave the direction after noting the view of the Undersecretary, Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, wherein he said that the screening test could not be insisted upon on those medical graduates in the absence of a notification by the government, specifying March 15, 2002 as the date contemplated in the amended section 13 (3) of the MCI (Amendment) Act, 2001.A large number of such medical graduates were denied registration by MCI on the ground that they had not completed their courses because the medical colleges they were studying in, had become defunct due to the disintegration of the Soviet Union. The MCI had also contended that in many cases, the colleges in CIS countries were not even recognised by it.Council counsel Maninder Singh contended that students had to pass the screening test to be conducted by the National Board of Examinations, constituted as per the court’s earlier direction. About 300 students had already passed the screening test since 2002, he pointed out.Senior counsel Dushyant Dave, appearing for the students, alleged that the MCI was obstructing the registration of medicos when the government had decided to grant them registration. But the bench said the registration had to be given as per MCI rules.
