Reservation would impact quality: Medical Council of India

Chennai: The Medical Council of India has maintained that reservation of 50% seats under government quota for in service candidates would impact the standard of education, which till now has been an MCI mandate. Mr. Vijay Narayan, Senior Counsel, MCI stated the above implications of reservation of seats in no uncertain terms to the Madras High Court on Friday.

During resumption of arguments on appeals regarding awarding of incentive marks to in service doctors, working in primary health centre’s, Mr. Vijay Narayan, Senior MCI Counsel, told Justice M Sathyanarayanan, that the scheme of incentive marks for PG admissions was justifiable, and had been upheld by the apex court of India, but reservation of seats would lower standards of education.

A split verdict by a special bench of two judges – Justice K K Sasidharan and Justice S M Subramaniam on May 3 had led to the case being passed onto Justice Sathyanarayanan.

Narayanan also informed the judge about the necessity of linking incentive marks to the candidates NEET scores, otherwise each state would do as it pleased, like coming up with their personal incentive marks ranging from 1 to 1o. If that happened Narayan feared it would affect the standardization of education bid being pursued by the MCI, reported the Indian Express.

Once the Council has decided on a 10 mark incentive per year to be linked to the NEET score, it will have to remain the same universally. He added.

In an earlier report the Medical Dialogues team had reported that the Health Ministry as part of a draft Indian Medical Council (Amendment) Bill,2016 has proposed 50% reservation of seats for post graduate courses in government colleges for those who have served at least three years in government healthcare institutions in remote and difficult areas.

Read more at Medical Dialogues: Govt proposes 50 pc reservation in PG seats for doctors having served 3 years in rural areas