Resident doctors from Delhi-AIIMS, Safdarjung Hospital, PGI-Chandigarh and Aligarh Muslim University along with several other organisations today took out a protest march against the National Medical Commission Bill.
The march was held from AIIMS to the Parliament House and over 10,000 doctors staged a protest opposing various provisions of the Bill that seeks to replace the Medical Council of India (MCI) with a new body.
The Bill was referred to the Parliamentary Select Committee, following protests by doctors from across the country.
They had claimed that the proposed legislation would “cripple” the functioning of medical professionals by making them completely answerable to the bureaucracy and non-medical administrators.
Doctors are also opposing the Bill’s proposal of allowing practitioners of alternative medicines, such as homoeopathy and ayurveda, practise allopathy after completing a “bridge course”.
AIIMS Resident Doctors Association (RDA) has termed the bill as “anti-poor”, “anti-people” and “unacceptable” to doctors and medical students in its present form. The Bill also proposes a common entrance exam and licentiate (exit) exam which all medical graduates will have to clear to get practising licences.
The RDA association has also written to both the Health ministry and the parliamentary committee to “remove” these clauses.
