The Tamil Nadu Congress Committee on Thursday claimed in the Madras High Court that the Medical Council of India (MCI) had been dissolved and hence it could not be a part of a committee ordered to be constituted for providing reservations to Other Backward Classes in All-India Quota medical seats in State government colleges.
Appearing before Chief Justice Amreshwar Pratap Sahi and Justice Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy, senior counsel E.M. Sudarsana Natchiappan said after eight years of struggle, the Parliament had enacted the National Medical Commission (NMC) Act of 2019. It also received the President’s assent and came into force from August 8, 2019.
As per the Act, the NMC should consist of a chairperson, 10 ex-officio members and 22 part-time members. One of the ex-officio members was the Director General of Health Services from the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. Section 8 of the Act also envisages a separate Secretariat for the commission headed by its Secretary.
“The Centre has appointed All India Institute of Medical Sciences professor Suresh Chandra Sharma as the chairman of NMC and Rakesh Kumar Vats, who was earlier Secretary General in the Board of Governors of MCI, as its secretary. The NMC has begun to function from a separate building and the MCI members have been reverted to their parent departments,” he said.
Mr. Natchiappan also brought it to the notice of the court that Section 60 of the NMC Act clearly states that the Indian Medical Council Act of 1956 would stand repealed and that the MCI would be dissolved with effect from a date fixed by the Centre. He claimed that a notification dissolving MCI was issued some time in February and sought time to produce it.
However, Additional Solicitor General R. Shankaranarayanan told the court he had no instructions on the issue. “I don’t think the notification under Section 60 of the Act has been issued though I am not sure about it,” he said and sought a couple of days to verify. On his part, MCI counsel V.P. Raman said his instruction was that the notification was yet to be issued.
After hearing all of them, the judges disposed of TNCC’s writ petition, seeking reservation for OBCs in the AIQ medical seats in non-central institutions, in terms of an order passed by them recently in a batch of cases filed by other political parties from the State. It was in those cases that they had ordered for the constitution of a committee to decide the percentage of reservations.
If there was any impediment in inducting the Secretary of MCI, into the committee, in view of its dissolution, the Centre could approach the court for an appropriate modification, the judges said.
