Panel to look into proposal of Five-year rotation of headship at AIIMS Delhi

New Delhi: The apex Institute, All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) has constituted a six-member expert panel to consider the proposal of rotation of headship after every five years in departments and centres.

The proposal was discussed in the central institute body (CIB) meeting held on June 16 last year under the chairmanship of the Union Health Minister, according to an AIIMS notification issued on August 18.

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"The CIB had said there were detailed deliberations on this issue. Some of the members shared their experience with the system of rotatory headship. The chairman expressed that the proposal needs to be examined further for its advantage and disadvantage and smooth functioning of Departments in AIIMS, Delhi, and desired that a new committee may be constituted with people of eminence as members who do not have any conflict of interest in the matter," it said.

The six members of the committee are Dr V K Paul, Member (NITI Aayog), Dr K K Talwar, former director, PGIMER, Chandigarh, Dr Jagat Ram, former Director, PGIMER, Chandigarh, Dr M C Misra, former Director of AIIMS, Delhi, Dr V M Katoch, former DG (ICMR) and President JIPMER and Dr Abhay Karandikar, Director of IIT Kanpur.

It was decided that the committee should approach various government institutions in the medical field as well as other fields where this system has been adopted and seek feedback from these institutions. "Based on these deliberations, this committee may be requested to give a recommendation of applicability of this system for well-established institutions like AIIMS, Delhi & PGI, Chandigarh. This committee may also give recommendations about the applicability of this system for new AIIMS which are at different stages of development," the document said.

Rotation of Headship after every five years is one of the key recommendations of the M S Valiathan committee which was constituted to suggest measures for improving the functioning of AIIMS during the Congress dispensation in 2006-2007.

The issue of rotating headship came to the governing body and institute body of AIIMS on several occasions in the past, but because of its "negative repercussions", it was never implemented, some doctors said.

The contentious issue of enforcing the policy was discussed earlier at the governing body meeting chaired by former health minister J P Nadda in 2017.

Several faculty members of the premier institute are against the implementation of the rotation of headships and other recommendations of the Valiathan committee report, which was criticised in the 87th report of the Rajya Sabha Parliamentary Standing Committee and by Members of Parliament.

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