Election of one member to Medical Council of India from Delhi

The election of one member to Medical Council of India has been announced and approximately 54000 members of Delhi Medical Council will be voting for their candidate to the Medical Council of India.

Dr. Vinay Aggarwal has filed his nomination and I know him personally for the last two decades. I have been working with him in Delhi Medical Council for the last four years and have worked with him in Indian Medical Association where he has worked as Past National President.

Dr Vinay is also a Dr. BC Roy National Awardee and Dr. PN Behl Community Service Awardee by Delhi Medical Association. He has been both the Secretary and President of DMA and Secretary General of IMA. At Branch level, he has been President of IMA East Delhi Branch.

In the recently held CMAAO conference, where again I worked closely with him, he took over as the President of CMAAO.

I personally feel that Medical Council of India needs people who are grass-root workers, medical activists working for the welfare of the society.

Today IMA has been able to make its presence felt in issues like Clinical Establishment Act, one-year Rural Service linked to education, re-institution of Medical Council of India. If it was not for the IMA, the MCI by now would have been dissolved permanently and a democratic body would have been converted into a sub-department of Ministry of Health. But because of the pressure by IMA and its activists, the Ministry of Health has been forced to re-elect MCI, a process which will complete on 9^th November this year.

MCI is not only about medical education but it also controls the registration and both protection and taking disciplinary action against doctors. Only grass-root workers can understand and provide significant inputs to MCI.

MCI today needs substantial change. There is a need for the capitation fees to come down; change in the UG and PG curricula; for PG examination immediately after MBBS and before internship; to have common entrance and exit examinations; of transparency in medical education admissions and to change the law by which a Russian doctor with MD Physician degree which is not even actually equivalent to MBBS degree in India is denied permission to write MD against their name. 

Finally there is a need to prepare a uniform and standard medical education programme across the country.

I wish him all the success.