E-Paper
Unqualified on date of appointment, 3 doctors at AIIMS-Patna face termination
Two of the three doctors facing the sack possess postgraduate (PG) degrees in zoology, a non-medical subject, whereas the December 2011 faculty recruitment advertisement for AIIMS required a PG degree recognised by the Medical Council of India or equivalent in the subject concerned.
The governing body of Patna’s All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) Thursday evening ratified a proposal to terminate the services of three senior faculty members for lacking basic qualification on the date of their appointment, people familiar with the development said.
Among those facing termination are Ajit Saxena, professor and head in the department of pathology and laboratory medicine, Sushmita Das, associate professor in the department of microbiology and Alok Ranjan, assistant professor in the department of community and family medicine.
The AIIMS administration was tight-lipped about the imminent sacking.
“Let the minutes (of the meeting) be prepared; we can then let you know about it,” said executive director of the International Clinical Epidemiological Network Dr Narendra Kumar Arora, also the chairman of the governing body of AIIMS-Patna.
AIIMS-Patna director Dr Prabhat Kumar Singh also refused to divulge what transpired in the governing body meeting.
“Once the minutes of the meeting are prepared and approved, it will be in public domain. Until then, I cannot divulge any information about the governing body meeting,” said Dr Singh.
Saxena and Das possess postgraduate (PG) degrees in zoology, a non-medical subject, whereas the December 2011 faculty recruitment advertisement for AIIMS required a PG degree recognised by the Medical Council of India or equivalent in the subject concerned.
Ranjan had the qualification, but did not have a Ph.D degree at the time of joining the AIIMS.
All these appointments date back to 2012-13.
People familiar with the development said two faculty members still do not possess the basic qualification required to occupy the position they do. The other faculty member, however, fulfilled the requisite criteria nine months after his joining the AIIMS on September 7, 2012 after he submitted his PhD degree from a university in the US.
One of the faculty members facing termination was even promoted during the August-September 2017 assessment promotion scheme of the AIIMS, despite not possessing the basic qualification.
Efforts to reach the three doctors concerned proved futile as they did not respond to phone calls or text messages on Friday. Some of the 19 doctors who were initially under the scanner, had earlier said that they should not be penalised after eight years for the selection committee’s fault. A few of them had moved the court against the disciplinary action initiated by the institute.
The appointments were initially red-flagged in 2013 by Anil Kishore Yadav, an IPS, the then deputy director (administration) of AIIMS-Patna.
The Vikas Arya committee, constituted by the Union ministry of health and family welfare (MoH&FW) in 2014, also found the appointments faulty. Finally, a five-member high-powered committee, comprising the director of AIIMS-Bhubaneswar and AIIMS-Patna, also held the appointments of the three doctors were erroneous.
