Political compulsions have forced the Union health and family welfare ministry to shoot down a Medical Council of India (MCI) notification introducing a common entrance test for admission to undergraduate and post-graduate medical courses from the 2011-12 academic year.
The notification issued on December 21 and published in the gazette amends the admission procedure and eligibility criteria. It abolishes the present system of various boards and institutions conducting separate entrance tests for admission to the country’s 138 government and 133 private medical colleges and replaces it with a single national eligibility-cum-entrance test (Neet).
The ministry has struck down the notification after granting it “in-principle” nod. The official reason is that Union health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad wants to OK Neet through a consensus at a state health ministers’ conference in Hyderabad next week and issue a fresh notification. That MCI’s act was due to “ignorance of government procedures” and in any such matter the government has the final say.
But sources said the fact was that the health ministry developed cold feet following protests by states such as Tamil Nadu which have a high number of private medical colleges.
Tamil Nadu chief minister M Karunanidhi’s DMK, which is a key ally of the UPA government at the Centre, is strongly opposed to the MCI proposal. In a letter sent to Azad last Monday, Karunanidhi had said he was “astonished” by the notification and his government “would strongly protest this move”.
The chief minister said a common entrance examination would mean interfering “with the rights of the state government in administering the education system”, besides creating problems in Tamil Nadu’s reservation policy.
He said: “A confusing situation in the admission of students for post-graduate courses would prevail in the country. This will also create problems in the reservation policy which varies from state to state.”
Azad, who is in-charge of Congress in Tamil Nadu, apparently could not take a chance but heed Karunanidhi, given that assembly elections are due in the state in the next few months.
So, for now, the old system stays.
