The Karnataka State Mental Health Authority (KSMHA) issued a directive to the country's premier mental health institute National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS) on Tuesday, August 1, asking it to take urgent steps to produce a permanent certificate of registration, according to government sources, as stated in a report by The New Indian Express.
It has not obtained the certificate as a mental health establishment as mandated under the Mental Healthcare Act of 2017.
"With countless neuro surgeries being performed here on a daily basis, it is a serious lapse that NIMHANS is yet to be registered as a mental health establishment under the Act," said a source.
What is worse is that NIMHANS attempted to seek exemption from registration, but did not succeed, he said.
Explaining the enormity of the issue, he said the chairperson of the Mental Health Review Board for Bangalore and Mysore Division constituted by the authority, Niyaz Ahmed S Dafedar, retired district judge of Bengaluru, in a letter on August 1, 2023, to Dr Pratima Murthy, Director and Senior Professor of Psychiatry, NIMHANS, accused the institute of providing contradictory information about its registration process to the authority through a series of written explanations.
A show cause notice was issued
The Review Board issued a show cause notice on October 19, 2022, seeking an explanation for non-registration. In a letter on November 2, 2022, NIMHANS informed the authority that it had sought an exemption from the Central Mental Health Authority (CMHA) from registration under Section 65(2) of the Mental Health Care Act of 2017.
The chairperson's letter stated that CMHA had no powers to exempt NIMHANS from registration. Exemptions can only be notified in the Union Government's official gazette.
Later, NIMHANS produced documents stating that it had not sought exemption but applied for permanent registration under Section 66 (12) of the Mental Health Care Act. However, acknowledgement of the receipt of form C by the Central Mental Health Authority was missing, the board stated in its letter.
The versions given by NIMHANS are contradictory, the board stated.
Another source said the chairperson's letter reiterated that the director of NIMHANS needs to make sincere efforts for producing a permanent certificate from CMHA immediately.
Officials from NIMHANS speak
Dr Pratima said, "We applied for registration recently. The absence of registration has not come in the way of patient care. We had sought exemption in the past as the previous Mental Health Act was in force."
On when NIMHANS will get the certificate, Superintendent of NIMHANS K Muralidharan said, "I can tell you that we have applied for it and we hope to get the registration number soon." However, both refused to give any specific dates on when the application was submitted.
"We fall under the Institute of National Importance (INI) category. Hence, we went in for exemption," he added.
Dr Pratima said NIMHANS provided space for the board a year ago on its campus. "We are ahead of other states which have not done that yet."
