Mystery over Ketan Desai’s licence to practise

TIMES OF INDIA 

Rema Nagarajan,TNN | Sep 23, 2015, 04.14 AM IST

The status of the suspension of the medical licence of Dr Ketan Desai, former president of the Medical Council of India, remains a mystery with the current dispensation in the council refusing to answer queries on the subject. IMA secretary general Dr K K Aggarwal claims he attended a meeting of the council's ethics committee in January 2014 when it was decided that the suspension should be revoked.

Dr Desai's medical licence was suspended in October 2010 by the MCI, which was then being run by a government-appointed board of governors that had taken over after the council was disbanded following the arrest of its president (Dr Desai) on corruption charges. All of the corruption cases filed against Dr Desai have been closed, barring one in Patiala House court in Delhi.

Dr Aggarwal was an 'invited member' to the MCI when it was reconstituted in November 2013 (though no provision exists in the Indian Medical Council Act for 'invited members) and also a part of ethics committee meetings. While Dr Aggarwal said the suspension was revoked, he admitted he did not have the minutes of the ethics committee meeting in which this decision was taken.

There have been several meetings of the ethics committee since the reconstituted MCI took over in 2013 with Dr Jayshree Mehta as the president. However the minutes of none of these meetings have been put up on the MCI website. MCI refuses to provide the minutes even to RTI applicants, though they are supposed to be in the public domain like the minutes of all other meetings. The minutes of all other committees, like the post-graduate committee and the executive committee have been put up on the website. The ethics committee meetings section alone has not been updated beyond October 2013.

According to many council members, the very first ethics committee meeting of the newly constituted MCI held in December 2013 revoked the suspension of Dr Desai. "If they put up ethics committee meeting minutes, they have to start with the first meeting. As they are wary of admitting in public that one of the first things they did after taking over was to revoke the suspension of Dr Desai, they are shying away from uploading the minutes of all subsequent meetings," explained a council member.

Dr Aggarwal argued that since Dr Desai was registered with the Gujarat Medical Council (GMC), the MCI could only ask GMC to carry out its decision to suspend his licence, and that the GMC had refused to do so. Since the GMC's decision was never challenged, Dr Desai continued to have his medical licence, said Dr Aggarwal. However, he was unable to explain why the MCI's ethics committee then needed to revoke a suspension that he says never happened.

While Dr Mehta has answered queries sent by the TOI on many issues such as permission to carry out live surgeries or on eligibility certificates for foreign graduates, she has maintained a studied silence on repeated queries on Dr Desai's suspension or on why the minutes of the ethics committee meetings are being made public.