Medical Council Denies registering doctors without SRship, Doctors seek help from Health Secretary

Doctors belonging to the 2017 and 2018 batch are especially paying the price since many of them failed to complete their tenure for personal reasons and the students of the 2018 batch pursuing their PG medical education in other states are not getting SRship in Telangana, which is a mandatory condition for getting registered.

Earlier it was made mandatory by the medical council to complete one-year compulsory rural service after MBBS and one-year SRship in government institutes after PG in order to get the degrees registered to the State Council.

However, these two clauses were removed back in 2018 and until 2020, no students were required to do SRship for getting their degrees degrees registered. Considering the COVID-19 pandemic, the SRship of one year became a mandatory criteria.

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"No one objected to this, because it was the pandemic. Accordingly, the 2017 batch joined SRship in 2020. The problem started because few of the students took maternity leave or leave due to personal reasons. After one year, everyone was terminated. Now, the government is neither giving SRship and on the other hand, TSMC is not doing registration of these doctors," explained Dr K. Mahesh Kumar, president, Healthcare Reforms Doctors Association.

"The 2018 batch has also been given SRship and they are doing it as well. However, the problem is regarding those students who pursued their studies in other states. They came back after completing their course. However, neither are those students are being given SRship, nor they are doing registration of these students. They are asking for NOC from other states, which doesn't make any sense since they students only went to other states only to do their higher studies not to practice. It will cost around 30,000 and a lot of time will get wasted," he added.

Healthcare Reforms Doctors Association has already come forward to support the doctors and writing to the Principal secretary of the Department of HM& FW, Shri Syed Ali Murtaza Rizvi, the association has mentioned, "We the members of HRDA here by bring to your kind notice that compulsory working of PGs as senior resident in Govt institutions is omitted by amendment of Telangana Medical Practitioners ACT i.e. ACT No. 6 of 2018 and the ACT came into force from 30^th June 2018 as notified by G.O. Ms.No.34 dated 19-04-2018.

But many PGs were denied to do registrations by TSMC though compulsory working as senior resident in govt institutions was omitted."

"Many Telangana state students pursued their PG in other states under 50% all India quota, central institutions and completed their course. When they came back to TSMC for additional qualification registration were denied of registrations seeking for NOC from PG pursued state though not registered in particular state. Because of this denial many SR posts remained vacant in present 3^rd wave when more work force is required to tackle pandemic," the letter further mentioned.

"Hence sir, we urge you to direct TSMC officials to do registrations irrespective of Senior residency & without seeking NOC and also direct concerned authorities to allow SRship for all 2021 batch passed out PGs from other states too," the association urged the Health Secretary.

While commenting on the matter, Dr. Mahesh Kumar told Medical Dialogues, "When the workforce is required during the pandemic, the doctors are not getting registered and they are not being able to serve the patients. They are not having their livelihood; they are not able to register themselves."

"First of all, they have no right to stop registration, due to this, the doctors have to sit ideally for one year. For now, we have written to the health secretary and waiting for any response. Later, we will have to consider all the other options that are there."