NMC to be set up in six months: Government

The MCI was dissolved in 2018 following allegations of corruption, and a board of governors constituted to take over its functioning.

India will get the National Medical Commission (NMC), that will replace the graft-tainted Medical Council of India (MCI), in the next six months, Union health minister Harsh Vardhan said on Thursday.

The 33-member commission will have 29 doctors as members in different capacities. The states will be represented by 19 members.(HT FILE)

The National Exit Test (NEXT), which will work as the common final-year exit exam for undergraduate medical students, licentiate exam to practise medicine and criteria for admission to postgraduate (PG) medical courses, will be implemented within three years. It will also be used to screen foreign medical graduates intending to work or study in India.

The MCI was dissolved in 2018 following allegations of corruption, and a board of governors constituted to take over its functioning.

The health ministry will soon notify the National Medical Commission (NMC) Act 2019 that received Presidential assent after Parliament cleared it on August 5.

The 33-member commission will have 29 doctors as members in different capacities. The states will be represented by 19 members. Of them, 10 members will be the vice-chancellors of various universities across states, and nine will belong to various state medical councils.

“Our resident doctors were misguided and some even went on a strike. After I explained to them that the rules and regulations were yet to be drafted, and would be done after extensive consultation with the stakeholders that they saw reason,” said Harsh Vardhan.

“There are a lot of misconceptions spread around the Act but now that the Bill has been passed, and is an Act, people concerned need to accept that reform in medical education in the form of National Medical Commission is the need of hour,” he added.

Even as the ministry will be in the process of constituting the medical commission, simultaneously it will also be drafting rules for the implementation of the commission.

“Some parts of the rules will be drafted along with the constitution of the commission and forming regulations will be the job of the commission once it is in place,” said Preeti Sudan, health secretary.

Last week, doctors’ associations and students of medicine had gone on a strike opposing the provisions in the NMC, with the most contentious ones being the introduction of a common National Exit Test (NEXT).

“How can one single exam decide all three? What if a candidate fails to take the test; then that person is left with no option,” Dr RV Asokan, secretary-general, Indian Medical Association (IMA) had said on August 1.