Manipur: Doctors stages sit-in-protest against medical bill

Imphal, January 3, 2018: The Indian Medical Association state branch staged a sit-in-protest yesterday at IMA house, Lamphelpat in tandem with Indian Medical Association (IMA) declaring January 2 as a "black day" for medical practitioners all over the country.

The doctors staged the protest by holding placards that read "NMC is costly education, costly treatment to people we reject NMC", "NMC is against poor people NMC is undemocratic", "one IMA one voice no NMC" and others.

National President of IMA, Dr. Ravi Wankhedkar said that the National Medical Council (NMC) in the present form is not acceptable.

Honorary secretary general of IMA, Dr. RN Tandon said that that the bill is anti-poor, anti-people, non-representative, undemocratic and anti-federal in character.

A press release by IMA secretary Sachindra Laishram mentions that the main objection of IMA to National Medical Commission bill is that it is a pro-private management bill paving the way for widespread corruption. It removes all the regulations required to start a medical college. Under this bill, no one needs any permission to start a medical college and can increase it's under graduate and post graduate seats by itself.

The release mentioned that only up to forty percent of seats in private medical college can be regulated by the government. For sixty percent or more seats the private colleges will fix the rates, which means that the poor students from schedule caste and schedule tribe classes will be deprived of medical education.

The bill promotes unscientific mixing of system of medicine. Only five states of the country will represent NMC while the remaining twenty four states will be represented thereby denying them their privileges. The state medical council which are sovereign bodies through enactment of the state legislatures will come directly under NMC.

For each state a representative will be represented in the advisory body called Medical Advisory Council though medical universities do not have a representation in NMC. If the bill is passed, the cost of medical education and healthcare will rise astronomically.

Feature image courtesy: Imphal Free Press

Source: Imphal Free Press