Former IMA president moves HC to seek discontinuation of CPS courses

Former president of Maharashtra IMA challenges notifications allowing CPS to continue 19 medical courses due to lack of infrastructure and staff

MUMBAI: Concerned over the lack of infrastructure, equipment, and teaching and non-teaching staff for students, the former president of the Maharashtra branch of the Indian Medical Association (IMA) on Monday approached the Bombay high court (HC) challenging three notifications that allowed the College of Physicians and Surgeons (CPS) to continue 19 medical courses offered by it.

Dr Suhas Pingle, also a former member of the Maharashtra Medical Council, has sought an order restraining CPS. (REPRESENTATIVE PHOTO)

In the PIL filed through advocate Madhav Thorat, Dr Suhas Pingle, also a former member of the Maharashtra Medical Council (MMC), has sought an order restraining CPS from affiliating or permitting any clinics and hospitals to admit students for its post-graduate diploma or fellowship courses.

Dr Suhas Pingle stated that he recently learnt that clinics are affiliated with CPS as their training and teaching hospitals for the conferment of their medical degrees. These clinics and hospitals, he said, lacked essential infrastructure, teaching and non-teaching staff, and equipment and added that no transparency was maintained while admitting the students to various postgraduate courses and in conducting examinations and evaluation of answer sheets.

He has challenged the validity of the notifications issued in 2017 and 2018, contending that those notifications allowed 9 PG courses offered by CPS at 5 specific medical colleges, but subsequently, the 5 colleges have stopped admitting CPS students and have started their own MD or MS courses. Therefore, he claimed that the CPS courses have been derecognised even in these 5 colleges and the notifications were required to be struck down.

Dr Pingle has challenged the March 15, 2024, notification, which re-recognised 10 CPS courses, contending that though the notification stated that it was issued under Section 28(1) of the MMC Act, after consultations with the MMC, the state-appointed MMC administrator was not present in the meeting in which the decision to allow the courses was taken.

He has also objected to the decision to allow CPS to continue the 10 courses, claiming that 72 hospitals did not even allow the MMC inspectors to inspect their premises to check if they had adequate facilities to train doctors for PG and Fellowship courses offered by CPS.

Dr Pingle has also challenged the constitutional validity of Section 28 of the Maharashtra Medical Council (MMC) Act, which empowers the state government to include any course offered by any university or medical college in the Schedule to the Act, and thus confer legal validity on the course across the state.

In this regard, the petitioner doctor has contended that the MMC Act is enacted only to deal with the registration of qualified persons to practise modern scientific medicine to take disciplinary action in case of misconduct, and not to deal with medical education.

He added that section 10 of the MMC Act limits the powers conferred on the MMC to regulate the registration of medical professionals to prescribe code of conduct and take disciplinary action, and therefore the provision contained in section 28 was ultra-vires – beyond the scope of - the Act.

The PIL is scheduled to come up for hearing on April 22.