New Delhi: The Medical Council of India (MCI) has been reconstituted by the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. As a result, MCI gets a new board of governors. The term of the present members of the Board of Governors, headed by Dr. S.K. Sarin, comes to end on May 14.
As per sources, renowned cardiologist Dr. K.K. Talwar has been appointed as the Chairman of the new Board of Governors for the MCI. Dr. Talwar has been a familiar figure at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) and has also been the Director of the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER), Chandigarh.
Moreover, other members who are nominated on the board subsequent to the broadcast of the regulation extending the supersession of the MCI by another year, include names such as Prof. K.S. Sharma from Tata Memorial Hospital, Prof Harbhajan Singh Rassam from Max Hospital, Dr. Rajiv Chintaman Yeravdekar from Symbiosis International University and Dr. Purushotham Lal, chairman of Metro Hospital.
Sources also informed that another section has been added to the functioning of the new board, which makes it compulsory for all members to work as full-time officials of the MCI. A ministry official said that the governing body is supposed to be a five member body and the names of other members are still being finalized.
It was alleged that the ministry had been displeased and offended with the speed of work of the earlier board of governors led by Dr. Sarin. The board had failed to increase the number of seats for postgraduate medical courses to the desired level for the current academic session. Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad had also been annoyed with the board for its unilateral judgment to introduce the controversial Common Entrance Test (CET) for graduate and postgraduate medical academic programmes in India.
The MCI and the health ministry had been on strife over the introduction of the test and the ministry had declared its announcement to be unacceptable.
