Tamil Nadu government opposes Draft Post Graduate Medical Education Regulations

The Tamil Nadu government on Saturday strongly objected to the Draft Post Graduate Medical Education Regulations released by the National Medical Commission recently, saying they intend to undermine the role of the states in this domain.

The draft regulations intend to undermine the role of the states in Post Graduate Medical Education, since their role in the admission of students under their own state quota is sought to be unilaterally removed, Chief Minister M K Stalin said.

In a letter to Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare Mansukh Mandavia, Stalin said the draft regulations have been formulated without a proper understanding of the current predominant role of state governments in this domain.

"The Union Government and the National Medical Council need to appreciate the fact that it is only the states which have heavily invested their own resources to create most of the PG seats. Considering this, our state has consistently been opposed to such measures aimed at centralization of states' powers," he said.

A provision of the draft PG regulations attempts to centralise and designate the Directorate General of Health Services, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India as the designated authority for counselling for state quota seats.

This section was clearly contrary to the proviso in Section 15 of the Main NMC Act, 2019, which explicitly mentions that "the designated authority of the state government shall conduct the common counselling for the seats at the state level," the CM added.

Further, Section 10.1 in the draft regulations and the sub-clauses under it were again a brazen attempt towards giving effect to the yet to be introduced licentiate examination for enrolment in medical registers and "making it serve as a NEET for admission to PG Courses." "Tamil Nadu has consistently been against the proposed National Exit test as well as the proposal to make it as the basis of admissions to PG seats. Thus, the draft regulations are totally against the consistent and principled stand of our state government," he added.

The state has been admitting the candidates who apply for admissions under the state quota PG seats in a transparent manner by following its reservation policy, without any issues so far, Stalin said. The draft regulations, if implemented, will grossly harm Tamil Nadu, Stalin said.

Any 'hasty' attempts, as brought out in the draft regulations, aimed at changing the present methodology of counselling for the state quota seats against the provision of the Main NMC Act and the proposal to make the National Exit test as the basis of PG admissions in future, should be immediately stopped, he told Mandavia.