Central Panel Order : MCI asked to ensure medical college brochures have anti-ragging info –

Move follows incidents of ragging at medical colleges in Jalgaon, Ranchi and Gurgaon.

The anti-ragging monitoring committee at the Centre has asked the Medical Council of India (MCI) to call for admission brochures, prospectus or booklets from all medical colleges to check and verify the inclusion of specific and adequate information on anti-ragging in them.

The move follows incidents of ragging at Maharashtra’s Dr Ullas Patel Medical College in Jalgaon, Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences, Ranchi, and SGT Medical College in Gurgaon.

“The MCI representative, while mentioning the steps taken on anti-ragging, brought out the cases pertaining to Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences, SGT Medical College, and Dr Ullas Patel Medical College. The committee noted that more than 85 students faced ragging. It was a serious case calling for prompt and forthright action. Calling it as a test case, the (committee) chairman called for immediate response and report from the MCI. It was noted that no concrete action was taken in such cases in the past…The MCI representative agreed to send action taken status on all the cases,” says the minutes of the meeting held recently.

It further said, “The professional councils were asked to send the admission brochures of the institutes under their purview to the monitoring agency to ensure that anti-ragging provisions were adequately included in the brochures. The chairman repeated that medical colleges are hot-beds for ragging and MCI has to set a good example by preventing it.”

Based on the directions in the form of repeated reminders from the committee chairman, the MCI representative also agreed to have a formal meeting of the committee with the executive committee of MCI to discuss issues like infirmities in MCI anti-ragging regulations, status of anti-ragging measures taken by MCI, steps taken on the ragging cases, cases where FIR was to be lodged or FIR has been pending or not followed up, and other similar issues.

Stating that there were a large number of cases of ragging in engineering colleges too, the committee directed that all statutory professional councils must set aside sufficient money for publicity about anti-ragging measures.

The committee, while recommending an annual budget of Rs 5 crore for the University Grants Commission (UGC), urged all the other councils to allocate specific budget for anti-ragging activities.

Both MCI and the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) were in particular asked to focus on media publicity through hoardings and posters. The committee directed that all regulatory bodies or institutions, besides updating their websites, should set up anti-ragging cells and appoint nodal officers.

Source | Indian Express | 18 August 2015