The damage done by Medical Council of India (MCI)’s corrupt and arbitrary approval of private medical colleges during Ketan Desai’s tenure as chairman and the scale of the rot in private medical education is still unravelling. TEHELKA’s sting operation (Where Munna Gets His MBBS, 16 July) exposed the dubious functioning of hospitals run by four private medical colleges near Delhi. This week, the spotlight is on KJ Mehta College of Medical Sciences in Bhavnagar, Gujarat. Here, in an innovative but outrageously fraudulent manner, clinical and staff capacity was faked by hiring doctors for a few hours to impress inspectors.
The college, in Saurashtra in southern Gujarat, was first approved when Desai was at the helm of MCI. It is run by a trust whose chairman Mansukhlal Shah, a dentist-turned-businessman, is also the trustee of Sumandeep University, Vadodara, one of 44 deemed universities whose status was challenged last year in the Supreme Court.
Meritorious students at KJM College pay Rs 3.5 lakh a year, others can pay Rs 32-35 lakh in installments (Rs 28 lakh in one go) over 5 years. After spending so much of their parents’ money and passing their first year MBBS exams, 148 students of this college are sitting at home fighting in a court case, wondering how to continue their studies. That’s because KJM was one of several colleges that failed to make the cut when it was re-inspected under a Supreme Court order last year after Desai’s removal. MCI derecognised it in July 2010 but the college management did not inform students of this.
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