Early this year, the Medical Council of India altered its rules for students wanting to pursue MBBS courses outside India. The revised rules said MCI would give eligibility certificates to students for taking admission in foreign universities only if the institutes were recognised under the Indian Medical Council Act.

This was a departure from the Council’s earlier rule under which the pre-requisite was that these colleges should be included in the World Directory of Medical Schools published by WHO. The move upset hundreds of students who had got admitted to universities in China and certain CIS countries as these colleges, though not recognised under the IMC Act, figured in the WHO list.

Giving them a breather, a Division Bench of the Delhi High Court has now asked MCI to treat the condition requiring the students to give an undertaking about the status of the college as provisional till it decided a petition, which raised this point. Some students who have already got their provisional selection letters from colleges in China and Azerbaijan have filed the petition. The court asked MCI to respond to the argument by September 5 when it will hear the matter next.

Interestingly, it was after a Single Judge order of the HC that the MCI added the new proviso to its rules. The Single Judge, while deciding a petition in April last had asked MCI to issue the eligibility certificates to only those students who ‘‘intend to pursue studies in a foreign university which has been duly mentioned and recognised in the MCI Act’’.

... contd.