'Make assessment reports of medical colleges public'

Transparency watchdog, the Central Information Commission, has directed the Medical Council of India (MCI) place assessment reports of medical colleges on the council's website.

Updated on: Dec 30, 2011, 01:03:13 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Transparency watchdog, the Central Information Commission, has directed the Medical Council of India (MCI) place assessment reports of medical colleges on the council's website.

G Vishnu, a resident of C R Park, Delhi, had filed a complaint with the CIC saying that the council has failed to place suo motto information on its website under section 4 of the Right To Information (RTI) Act regarding inspection reports of the medical colleges.

Vishnu asked the commission to direct the MCI to place primary inspection reports of colleges, approval and rejection reports and annual or bi-annual inspections which are mandatory in public domain. He also wanted MCI reports on capitation fees and action taken for the same against colleges to be displayed on the website.

The MCI informed that the colleges are inspected after every five years and the assessment reports cover the issues related to quality and bed occupancy in the linked hospital.

Information commissioner Shailesh Gandhi after deliberations with MCI decided that providing the assessment report of the colleges would be enough for people to take a view on a medical college. He also said that information regarding whether a proposal from a medical college has been approved or rejected should also be placed in public domain.

"It was agreed that the public authority would display the assessment report and whether the application has been approved or rejected by 30 July of each year where applicable," Gandhi's order said.

The transparency law envisages that every government departments disclose information voluntarily to ensure "transparency" and "accountability" in institutions. "This will reduce the load of RTI applications being filed with each institution as information will be freely available to citizens," Gandhi said.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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