Foreign Medical Graduates (FMGs) in Bihar staged a protest at the Bihar Council for Medical Registrations (BCMR) office in Patna today, June 3, over the pending allotment of internships to them for their Compulsory Rotating Medical Internships (CRMI).
To recall, these FMGs have been awaiting internships for at least five months now, ever since they cleared the FMG Exam this January. They say that they still haven’t received any update on when they would be able to begin their internships.
FMGs say that the Bihar Government, as well as the BCMR, have only been giving them vague timelines, but not concrete dates. “First, BCMR will tell us that the allotment list will be out in 10 days. When that does not happen, they will ask for us to wait for a week more. We spent about six months doing just that — waiting,” an FMG said, on the condition of anonymity.
Due to these delays, the FMGs knocked on the doors of several officials and organisations, such as BCMR, the health secretary and even the Ministry of Health for relief and clarity — but to no avail.
“No matter which authority we tried to approach — be it the BCMR or the Health Secretary — officials brushed their hands off our grievances. We were either told that the matter did not concern their department, or that they were too junior in the bureaucratic ladder to do anything. Nobody was willing to help us,” claimed another FMG.
The FMG alleged that the way the BCMR has been acting is creating doubts among FMGs about possible corruption.
“As long as we had clarity about what was going on with our CRMI allotments, we would not mind if there was any corruption behind the scenes. Even if the BCMR did not act with 100 per cent transparency, we would let it go as not everything can be disclosed to us. But today, there is zero transparency. We are being left in the dark deliberately,” they allege.
This lack of information and clarity about their future has become a cause for anxiety and worry for FMGs in the state.
“When the CRMI list was issued for the first time, I got placed at the Patna Medical College & Hospital (PMCH), as I was among the top five performers in the FMG exam from Bihar. However, the status of my internship remains uncertain, despite having a good score in the FMG exam,” says another FMG, who was part of today’s protest.
Initially, the BCMR issued the CRMI allotment list after the exam but had to withdraw it due to printing mistakes in the final scores of the candidates on April 17. When the BCMR rectified the errors and published the allotment list again, the lists were declared null and void by the Bihar Health Department over alleged violations in National Medical Commission (NMC) rules on April 22.
When FMGs tried to approach individual teaching hospitals for their internships, they were then told that all internship slots were filled by then, and the last date of registration was April 17 — leading them to suspect foul play.
Since then, these FMGs have remained without being allotted their CRMIs, with no relief in sight.
“Even in today’s protest, no official from the BCMR was willing to meet us. All these days, we were made to run around in circles, and for what? We still have no idea about when our internships would begin,” the FMG said.
“We could have chosen to pursue our internships in neighbouring states, but we chose Bihar because we are from Bihar, and wanted to work in our own state. We are now stuck, while FMGs in other states already began their internships,” he lamented.
He added that the protest consisted of FMGs from various districts in the state, who could not afford to stay back in Patna to mount additional pressure on the BCMR. “Most of them have no place to stay in the city, and had to go back home,” he said.
Left with no other avenues to convey their grievances to the government or the BCMR, and with no clarity on when their internships would begin, FMGs in Bihar are left in a precarious state — with this delay threatening disastrous consequences on their careers and future.
