The Medical Council of India, a statutory national agency charged with several responsibilities is sadly plagued by inefficiency, arbitrariness and lack of transparency according to some reports and is set to be replaced with a new bill.

The criticism

The Medical Council of India (MCI)has recently been rocked by scandals of various types and with questions regarding its efficacy. Moreover, it has often evoked criticism due to the fact that it is one of the critical professions which does not have a strong independent overseer like many other professions.

The main criticism on the MCI has been its controversial approvals of colleges, hospitals, some suspected malpractices and corruption. The MCI currently oversees critical functions such as designing and monitoring medical education curricula, accreditation of colleges and educational institutions and also on monitoring ethical practices in the field of medicine.

Earlier committees, including a recent Parliamentary Standing Committee, reviewed the MCI in 2015-2016 and noted that the MCI had failed to create an appropriate UG and PG curriculum, maintain standards in the regulation of education, and conduct proper investigations and a mechanism to transparently disclose inspection results to interested parties.

That parliamentary committee had noted that the current laws were grossly inadequate to remedy the MCI, whose basic structure and manner of functioning itself needed to be changed. Apart from the parliamentary committee, the Ranjit Roy Chaudhary Committee had been constituted to review the Indian Medical Council Act of 1956, which had also vouched for the replacement of the MCI. This committee, followed by the PSC (parliamentary standing committee), had been equally critical of the MCI and its style of functioning; listing in detail the failures of the MCI in its indictment of the MCI and the Act of 1956.

Even some current and former officials had noted that medical education, regulating the ethical practice of medicine had all taken a hit during the MCI’s tenure in the recent years. Among one of the controversial cases was when one of its former presidents Ketan Desai was arrested in 2010 by the CBI in a Rs 2 crore bribery case. The money was allegedly accepted to grant approval to a college in Patiala to enroll students.

The decision to overhaul

The decision to overhaul the organization or consider scrapping it was taken in a meeting earlier in 2017, when the Prime Minister had expressed displeasure at the controversies which had plagued the MCI. The government then set up a three-member committee to prepare a roadmap to overhaul the current set-up. The committee had the PM's additional principal secretary P K Mishra, NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant as members, besides Panagariya.

On December 15, 2017, the Union Cabinet decided to introduce the National Medical Commission Bill, a step which was seen to be a major reform in the medical sector, especially after the Supreme Court’s decision to regulate the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) exam in 2016. The Cabinet accepted the recommendation of the commission and noted that the MCI, as noted by various other review committees as well as this commission (chaired by Panagariya) that the MCI had failed and become too closely enmeshed with the community and had failed to regulate the sector effectively.

The new commission

The new commission is proposed to be run by eminent persons from the medical field. The panellists will be able to continue their professional commitments, this was a major recommendation by a panel headed by former NITI Aayog head Arvind Panagariya. This was recommended to ensure that even talented, practising doctors could who would not fear losing on professional commitments and progress because of taking up the assignment of being part of the MCI.

The scandal-hit MCI will soon be disbanded. The overhaul of the medical education system and regulation and monitoring ethical practices among the medical community will be the main priorities of the new organization.The new body, the National Medical Commission would comprise of multiple committees and departments and would be open to practicing doctors. The body would bring about significant changes and has proposed newer steps such as exit exams for MBBS students, a regulatory structure for fees in medical colleges, especially private medical colleges and a nationwide registry for medical practitioners.

The sentiments of Indian medical community 

Somewhat expectedly, the medical fraternity including some from the Indian Medical Association (IMA), India’s largest association of doctors and medical students with over 2,50,000 members have protested against. According to their version, the medical fraternity has noted that the medical fraternity is ill-suited for regulation by non-medical professionals. Among other concerns, the IMA has raised concerns that the NMC does not allow elections of officials, giving a free hand to private medical college owners to charge more, and adding an examination for qualification after a stringent educational course, and also an alleged scrapping of a section which would scrap the requirement of requiring an MBBS degree for practicing medicine in India.

The introduction of the NMC hasn't gone done well with the doctor community. Albeit enthusiastic response from some elements, the medical fraternity has not been enthusiastic about the new changes which the new rules are about to bring.