Over 500 doctors who were not eligible to be enrolled as medical practitioners in India as they had not obtained medical degree from a single country, will now be able to practise in India. In a recent decision by the Medical Council of India (MCI), the council approved degrees of over 500 foreign medical graduates-trained in India. These doctors could not practise in India as neither did they fall in the category of domestic medical graduates not were they overseas medical graduates.
While these doctors had started their MBBS from India, they completed their course in other countries and had obtained their degrees from other nations like Tanzania, Seychelles, Netherlands and Philippines. “These were the pending cases of Indians who started their course in India but possess foreign medical degrees. The cases were pending for almost a decade. With their degrees now recognised they would be able to practise in India,” said Dr S. Sharma, secretary, MCI. The doctors who obtained the degree before 2002 have also been exempted from giving the screening test conducted by the National Board of Examination. The test is mandatory to be cleared by the doctors obtaining foreign degrees to be able to practise in India. However, the doctors who obtained the degree after 2002 will have to clear the test. “These cases were prior to year 2010. To avoid such cases in future, the MCI out came with a regulation in 2010,” added Dr Sharma.
The MCI recently also allowed about 70 doctors who had migrated from Pakistan more than a decade ago, to practise medicine in India. The MCI also decided that all Pakistani doctors seeking migration to India before March 2002 should also be exempted from the screening test regulation.
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NBA for CBI probe into lending
AGE CORRESPONDENT
BHOPAL, Feb. 7
The Narmada Bachao Andolan has sought a CBI probe into “irregular” public lending by the financial institutions and banks and demanded the scrapping of agreements linked with the Maheshwar Power Project as the cost of power from the privatized Maheshwar Hydro-electric project has now become `10 per unit (Kwh) against the average cost of ` 2.44 per unit of power presently being purchased by Madhya Pradesh as per tariff order of the state electricity regulatory commission. Addressing a press conference here on Tuesday, senior NBA activist Alok Agrawal said that the records of the meetings held by the ministry of power between May 26, 2011 and October 19, 2011, obtained under the RTI, expose the high cost of power from the privatized Maheshwar Hydro-electric project.
The cost of power from two upcoming private power projects in Madhya Pradesh — Essar Power and Torrent are `2.45 per unit and `3.31 per unit respectively, the NBA leader pointed out adding the cost of power from two private power projects in Himachal Pradesh are `3.19 per unit and `2.61 per unit respectively.