By Aarti Dhar
NEW DELHI: Bowing to pressure from Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi, the Centre has put on hold the decision by the Medical Council of India for conducting a common entrance test (CET) for MBBS courses from the next academic session.

The move has also been opposed by the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK).

The decision comes just two days after the Medical Council of India (MCI) announced with much fanfare its decision to hold an all-India entrance test for admission to medical colleges for undergraduate courses from 2011-2012. The MCI was awaiting formal approval of the notification to this effect.

Mr Karunanidhi had written to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, urging him
to “reconsider'' its move to conduct a national-level common entrance examination for MBBS courses and said that the State could not accept the move as it amounted to an “infringement by the Union government on the autonomy of States.” A copy of the letter was sent to Union Health and Family Welfare Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad.

Mr. Karunanidhi wrote to the Prime Minister on August 16 referring to the submission made by the Centre in the Supreme Court on the MCI recommendation to conduct a common entrance examination from next year. The Board of Governors of the MCI formally announced the decision the following day, saying that a notification would come in a day or two.

According to Mr. Karunanidhi, Tamil Nadu had scrapped the entrance examination for engineering and medical admissions in 2007-08 through legislation with the Presidential assent. This had been done to
safeguard the interests of the socially and economically disadvantaged students from the rural areas. The move benefited many such students and also resulted in more doctors agreeing to work in rural areas.

Tamil Nadu had also implemented 69 per cent reservation for socially disadvantaged sections, which would be difficult to implement when there was a common entrance examination, Mr. Karunanidhi said in his letter.

Supreme Court moved

On August 19, Tamil Nadu moved the Supreme Court seeking to implead itself in a pending matter on which the Centre submitted that the MCI would come out with a notification for the CET for admission to medical courses.

On the same day, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and the AIADMK raised the matter in Parliament with the members demanding that the common entrance examinations for medical and engineering admissions be done away with, alleging infringement on the rights of the States.
(Courtesy : The Hindu)

Our Correspondent adds :

The ministry has been under tremendous pressure from several private unaided institutions in the country which said that the all-India medical admission test goes against a Supreme Court verdict that recognises and safeguards their freedom in a variety of issues, including the right to admission.

On August 19 Union Health Secretary K Sujatha Rao told reporters that the CET is being kept in abeyance and is being deferred for some time. She said that the MCI needs to have wider consultation with all state governments before going ahead with the plan. "We will bring up the issue on the August 30 meeting of the Central Council of Health and Family Welfare. States like Tamil Nadu had some reservations about the test. We will soon work out the modalities and fine tune the proposal,” K Sujatha Rao said.

On August 19 both DMK and AIADMK had opposed the proposal in Rajya Sabha. Tamil Nadu, it may be recalled, had scrapped CET in the state two years ago because it felt the system favoured urban students.

All-India medical admission test from 2011

From Our Correspondent
NEW DELHI : On August 17 the chief of the Medical Council of India (MCI) Dr Shiv Kumar Sarin officially announced that from the year 2011 the government will hold a single common entrance test for undergraduate and postgraduate medical colleges in the country.

The proposed entrance test would cover all medical colleges except the Armed Forces Medical College and the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi and the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh. The AIIMS and PGI Chandigarh were established under Acts of Parliament and, hence not covered by the Indian Medical Council Act.

The announcement is in consonance with what the Union government told the Supreme Court bench comprising Justices R V Raveendran and H L Gokhale on August 13 regarding medical education.

Dr Sarin, the chairman of the six-member panel of doctors governing the MCI said: “The health ministry has accepted the proposal — we expect a notification within a day or two. It may be called a national eligibility or entrance test.”

“This will provide some standards for entry into medical colleges,” Sarin added.

The panel had earlier this year proposed a common test for all 32,000 undergraduate and 13,000 postgraduate medical seats. Under the plan, every student wishing to enter a medical college — whether government or private — will have to appear for the test and entry would then be on merit.

While private management and minority seat quotas will continue, even the students entering through the quotas will need to appear for the examination. The capitation fee system prevailing today does not impose such conditions on management candidates.

The Union Human Resource Development Ministry had earlier this year proposed a common entrance test for both engineering and medicine — through an examination that would test engineering candidates in mathematics, and medicine candidates in biology, with physics and chemistry as common papers.

Sarin said the exact pattern of the common eligibility test and which agency would conduct it were yet to be finalised.

He said the panel wished that every medical seat in the country was covered by such a common test, but indicated that it was still unclear whether the test would also apply for admission to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi.

Panel members have said the common entrance test will also ease the burden on Class XII students. A typical Class XII student who aspires to join the undergraduate MBBS programme usually takes about five or six entrance tests.

The apex panel of doctors overseeing medical education in India is examining multiple options to combat faculty shortages, including web-based distance education and the use of private doctors as part-time faculty.

The panel has launched a process of consultation within the medical community to determine how best to use technology and possibly doctors from the private sector to fill gaps in faculty, panel members said.

The country’s 270 medical colleges have a combined faculty strength of about 25,000 but, the panel members said, the country has a current deficiency of 700,000 doctors. Any increase in the number of medical colleges will intensify existing faculty shortage.

“We can’t just manufacture teachers — we’re looking at options, and we’re open to new ideas,” said Sita Naik, a member of the medical panel governing the MCI.She said a proposal for a medical college telemedicine network that would allow colleges across the country to share faculty is among options under discussion.

The panel is likely to examine whether it would be possible to make use of highly qualified doctors in the private sector to serve as part-time faculty in medical colleges. But it is still unclear what mechanism could be used to pick private doctors.

“An excellent surgeon may not be a great teacher — you need certain teaching skills such as being able to communicate to students,” Naik said. “But a great surgeon may be able to demonstrate and may find use at the postgraduate level.”

The MCI is also revamping the medical education curricula for both under-graduate and post-graduate courses and increasing the post-graduation seats.