New Delhi, September 24: India’s new medical education regulator, the National Medical Commission, will come into force from Friday with the Centre abolishing the 87-year-old Medical Council of India, which was marred by corruption in its later years & notified the 33-member NMC saying it would come into force from September 25.
With the notification, the board of governors of MCI stands automatically dissolved. The BoG was appointed four years ago to run MCI affairs while the MCI remained dissolved.
On Thursday, the MCI was abolished. The notification names Suresh Chandra Sharma, HoD, ENT, AIIMS, New Delhi, as the chairperson of the NMC which will have four autonomous boards to regulate undergraduate medical education, postgraduate medical education, medical assessment and ratings and ethics and medical registration.
The development means all provisions of the NMC Act, 2019, will roll from Friday, including fee regulation on 50 per cent seats in private medical colleges and deemed universities; end of inspections for college renewals; commencement of final-year MBBS exam for three purposes - licensiate exam for MBBS passouts to issue them a licence to practise medicine; entrance exam for postgraduate medical education and entrance exam for foreign medical graduates.
The NMC will also make guidelines for a new cadre of non-MBBS mid-level health service providers such as nursing practitioners and pharmacists with limited rights to dispense medicines.
The notification names presidents of four autonomous boards under the NMC as follows – Aruna Vanikar, HoD Pathology; GR Doshi, Institute of Kidney Diseases, Ahmadabad (UG medical board); MK Ramesh, Head, surgery at Bangalore Medical College and Research Institute (PG medical education board); Achal Gulati, Director Principal, BR Ambedkar Medical College, Delhi; and BN Gangadhar, Director of NIMHANS Bangalore as the president of medical ethics and registration board.
The new regulator has a significant representation from the region with PGI Chandigarh Director Jagat Ram among 11 full-time members with three years’ tenure starting Friday.
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