The Union Cabinet has cleared the National Medical Commission Bill, 2019, a draft law that seeks to replace the Medical Council of India, a body that was tainted with serious charges of corruption in medical education. As of now, the MCI is being governed by a ten-member board of governors whose term expires next year in September.
The Bill is likely to come up in this session, after being in the works since December 2017, when it was introduced in the Lok Sabha for the first time. In January 2018, the draft was sent to the standing committee, and subsequent to the committee's report, several amendments were introduced in the Bill. However, the Bill couldn't come up in any of the subsequent sessions of the Parliament in the previous term of the government.
One of the main features of the fresh Bill is the common final year exam for MBBS students, known as the National Exit Test (NEXT), which would serve as a licentiate exam for entrance to PG courses in medicine, and as a screening test for foreign medical graduates. The upshot of this exam will be that medicine graduates would not have to appear for two exams—the final year exam, and then the entrance test. NEXT will also ensure a certain uniformity of standards in quality of graduates, which is currently compromised because every medical college has its own final year examination, an official from the Union ministry of health and family welfare told THE WEEK. The common exam will also allow medicine graduates to focus on their internships. “As of now, they end up spending time preparing for their PG entrance exams during their internship period,” the official said.
Medical entrance exams such as NEET, common counselling and NEXT will also be applicable to institutes of national importance such as AIIMS to have common standards in the country. The National Medical Commission will also regulate the fees for 50 per cent of the seats in private medical colleges and deemed universities, according to the Bill. However, this clause raised concerns among experts, who have been arguing that this provision would leave the fee structure for the rest of the seats open to market forces. The draft law also allows for a medical assessment and rating board, to assess each college and develop a system of ranking for students to choose “wisely”. This board will also grant permissions for the new colleges, starting PG courses and increasing the number of seats in the colleges. There will be four autonomous boards (each to govern ratings, medical ethics, and undergraduate and postgrduate education), and the strength of the boards has been increased from 3 to 5, with two part-time members. One of them will be a doctor selected by the government, and another would be a representative from the state medical council.
The law aims to make the admission process “transparent” and “bring down” admission fees.
