Government has put up draft proposal of National Medical Commission Bill for stakeholders' review till August 31, 2016 to replace Medical Council of India (MCI) with a new apex regulator for the medical sector, formulated by an expert committee on medical education appointed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The suggestions on the draft proposal of the bill after the conclusion of the review process will go to the Council of Ministers for further consultation and finally to the Cabinet for its further enactment, informed an official associated with the development.

Medical Council is a statutory body meant to regulate medical institutions, register doctors and frame and implement ethical guidelines for clinical practice in the country.

Government is also planning to grant only 10 per cent representation to doctors in the new body to be rechristened as National Medical Commission (NMC) to oversee and regulate medical practice in the country which is currently being opposed by the doctors in the country. This comes close on the heels with MCI denying permission to 86 private medical institutions for non-compliance to rules and subsequent to which government overturning the ban in favour of 26 non-compliant private medical institutions.

According to a senior Medical Council official associated with the development, “Government’s mandate of scrapping MCI on charges of corruption is not justified as the current MCI has two third members appointed or nominated by the government itself with only one third members coming through election. How is that a body having Government representation for several years found the corruption so late.”

Besides this the poor representation of doctors to be accorded in the new body would be detrimental to the patient safety as rest of the members are non-doctors lacking knowledge on ethics and medical education unlike the Bar Council which have complete representation from the lawyer fraternity.

Meanwhile state government and the Maharashtra Medical Council (MMC) are at loggerheads because of government’s unilateral decision to appoint a registrar from the Ayurveda background which as per the MMC Act allows only allopathy practitioners to hold the charge through a consultation process following a process of electing members.

Further compounding the issue is holding of elections by a state government notification which has been pending for the past three months ever since the MMC completed its tenure on May 21, 2016.