The Medical Council of India (MCI), which was in the news for irregularities forcing the Government to take over the control some time back, has come under criticism also from the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) in its performance audit.

The performance audit revealed non-adherence to prescribed standards in establishment of certain new medical colleges, increase of seats in certain medical colleges without having the requisite facilities and standards, and renewal of permission for yearly admission in some cases without fulfilling the requisite minimum standards in the inspection reports.

“The maintenance of uniform standards of medical education hampered as the Council did not adhere to its own norms of periodical inspection of recognised medical colleges once in a block of five years in 56 out of 63 medical collages periodically inspected during the review period. It was adopting diluted standards of medical education or the allowable shortage of teaching faculty and residents in the government medical colleges in comparison to the private colleges,” the report said.

“Out of these 63 medical colleges, 48 and 39 medical colleges were allowed to function despite shortage of faculty and residents respectively beyond the permissible limits in both the government and private sectors,” it said.

“Thus, the performance audit revealed failure of the Council to achieve its principal objective of maintenance of uniform standards of medical education, leading to sub-standard quality of medical education being imparted in the medical colleges found deficient. This may also result in adverse affect on the delivery of public healthcare in the country,” the CAG noted.

According to the auditor, the Union ministry of health furnished replies to the initial audit observations during the audit. Reply to the draft report issued to the Ministry in January 2010 still did not come till the time of final report.

The CAG also pointed out that the recommendation of the Parliamentary Committee (10th Lok Sabha) for mandatory re-registration and renewal of registration of every medical practitioner remained unimplemented due to inaction on the part of the Union Ministry of Health.

The report also pointed out the skewed distribution of the medical colleges across the country as 188 medical colleges accounting for 63 per cent of the total of 299 medical colleges were in six states of Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Uttar Pradesh.

“Despite wide variations noticed in the inspection report of the Council and the Ministry in case of two medical colleges, permission for their establishment was granted simply on submission of compliance of deficiencies by the applicant without getting the same verified through compliance verification inspection,” the report said.

Despite non-adherence to required minimum standards of medical education, permission was granted for renewal of permission for yearly admission to 11 medical colleges while three medical colleges got permission for increasing seats.

“The shortage of faculty and residents beyond the permissible limits were noticed in 29 and 21 medical colleges respectively in the periodical inspection of 42 government medical colleges. Similarly, shortage of faculty and residents beyond permissible limits were noticed in 19 and 18 colleges respectively in the periodical inspection of the auditors in just 21 private medical colleges,” the report cited.

“Out of 128 delinquent medical teachers whose names were deleted from the Indian Medical Registrar (IMR), 38 medical teachers were found to be working in medical colleges during the period of deletion of their names from IMR. As many as 18 medical teachers were found working in more than one medical college on the same date of inspection thus implying that some other persons had impersonated them in any of the colleges. Besides, 102 teachers were found working in both dental and medical colleges simultaneously,” the report said.