DO NOT Deregister doctors: High court to Karnataka Medical Council

Bengaluru: Karnataka Medical Council (KMC) has received an interim order by the Karnataka High Court on Thursday, directing the state council not to cancel the licences of Indian Medical Association (Karnataka Chapter)  members as well as other doctors who fail to submit renewal applications as well as the renewal fee by December 31, 2016.

This comes after the Karnataka Medical Council, brought into implementation the norms requiring medical practitioners to undergo not less than 100 hours conducted by an organization/institution recognized by MCI and produce the certificate for the same for the purposes of re-registration. The sudden decision of the implementation indeed disgruntled the medical practitioners of the state as the KMC Act was amended about four years ago to bring in the clause but the norms were now being enforced through an intimation issued as late as December 14, 2016, with a dead line of 31st December, 2016.

Read Also: Karnataka Medical council postpones re-registration process following protests

Members of the Indian Medical Association knocked at the gates of the high court challenging the sudden enforcement of the move, which also came in the absence of a Gazette notification, contented by the petitioners.

The petitioners also pointed out that there are around 1.19 lakh medical practitioners in the State. Though around 80 per cent of medical practitioners have already submitted their applications, the rest have to wait in a long queue for submitting their applications before the deadline. The counsel for IMA also argued that all these years medical practitioners were not required to produce any such certificate as they were operating under permanent registration, reports TOI.

The court, responding the matter, declined to give a stay on the norm that requires a registered medical practitioner to produce a certificate for having attended a Continuing Medical Education (CME) programme for about one hundred hours, reports The Hindu. The court however, through the interim order directed the medical council not to de-register the not to de-register doctors until further orders. Vacation judge Justice Aravind Kumar also ordered notice to the government and Medical Council of India (MCI).