Health Ministry cannot intervene to solve pay parity of MBBS interns: Mansukh Mandaviya

Such indications were given by the Health Minister in a reply to the Rajya Sabha MP Binoy Viswam on March 11, reports The Hindu.

Medical Dialogues has been reporting about the huge pay disparity between the MBBS interns at Government and Private medical colleges in India. Several instances of Private Medical Colleges were found where the management was paying no or minimal stipend to the students.

Although initiatives were taken by erstwhile Medical Council of India to end this disparity, later MCI was replaced by NMC and the problems remained unsolved.

In the Draft regulations for Rotational Compulsory Regulations 2021, released in April, NMC, the apex medical body mentioned, "All interns shall be paid stipend as fixed by the appropriate fee fixation authority applicable to the institution/university/state."

Although suggestions were given to NMC for implementing Uniform Stipend Policy, no changes were made in this respect and the draft was passed in the Gazette on November 18. Along with this, the fate of MBBS interns studying in private medical colleges remained at the mercy of their institutes.

Objecting to the huge disparity, the National Students' Union of India (NSUI) had approached the Karnataka Government seeking its intervention.

Last year, on December 8, Binoy Viswam, Rajya Sabha MP belonging to the Communist Party of India had submitted a letter to the Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya in this regard. He requested all the ministers to have a conversation with the stakeholders like State Governments, MBBS college managements, medical professionals and MBBS students to formulate a policy keeping in mind the mutual benefit of all the parties involved as well as the medical students.

Mr. Viswam had raised concerns about the disparity in stipends paid to MBBS interns at private/deemed universities versus those at government colleges. Pointing out that MBBS interns get stipends "as a matter of right and not charity", he claimed that the NMC Regulations on Compulsory Rotating Internship, 2021, allowed for ambiguity and arbitrariness in the stipend allocation.

"It may also result in management of private colleges denying a stipend to MBBS interns as they have complete discretion without any safeguarding mechanism," the letter had mentioned.

Responding to this, the Union Health Ministry had sought an opinion from the National Medical Commission (NMC) on initiating a uniform stipend structure for MBBS interns in government and private medical colleges across the country.

However, the reply from NMC does not look promising to the private medical colleges interns as the apex body has clarified before the Health Ministry that the 2021 regulations mention that the stipend would be fixed by institutes, Universities or States.

Also Read: Right not Charity: Why NMC should regulate MBBS stipend at private medical colleges

As per the latest media report by The Hindu, the Minister informed, "The Commission has informed the Ministry that as per Section 3(a) of the National Medical Commission (Compulsory Rotating Medical Internship) Regulations 2021, all the interns shall be paid stipend as fixed by the appropriate authority applicable to the institution/University or State."

The Minister also stated in his reply to Mr. Viswam that the Centre grants payment of stipend only to the interns undergoing compulsory rotational internship in hospitals/medical institutions under its administrative control which gets revised bi-annually with the approval of the Department of Expenditure.

In this regard, the last revision was made on July 7, 2021 and currently the MBBS interns at government institutes are getting a monthly stipend of Rs 26,300 with effect from January 1, 2020, added the Minister.

Such a stand of the Union Health Ministry and the NMC is significant in a context where recently the apex medical body published guidelines for the inclusion of foreign medical graduates in the Indian system and directed the institutes to give them equal stipend and other facilities equivalent to the Indian medical graduates undergoing training in government medical colleges.

The daily adds that the public health professionals while pointing out that magnanimity to be an welcome step to assure the Ukraine-returned graduates, mentioned that similar approach is not taken for the Indian medical students enrolled in private institutes of this country.