Govt: No provision to absorb Ukraine-returned students

New Delhi, December 13

The government reiterated in Parliament on Tuesday that Indian students could not be accommodated in domestic medical colleges because there was no relevant law in place.

“Foreign medical students/graduates are either covered under the Screening Test Regulations, 2002, or Foreign Medical Graduate Licentiate Regulations, 2021. There are no such provisions in the Indian Medical Council Act, 1956, the National Medical Commission (NMC) Act, 2019, as well as the regulations to accommodate or transfer medical students from any foreign medical institutes to Indian medical colleges. The NMC has not granted permission to transfer or accommodate foreign medical students in any Indian medical institute/university,” Minister of State for Health Bharati Pawar said.

The minister, however, said that in pursuance of SC orders, the NMC had devised a scheme as per which Indian students who were in the last year of their undergraduate medicine course (and had to leave their foreign institutes due to Covid and Russia-Ukraine conflict) and have subsequently completed their studies, have also been granted certificate of completion of course by their respective institutes on or before June 30, 2022, are permitted to appear in foreign medical graduate (FMG) examination.

“Upon qualifying the FMG examination, such foreign medical graduates are required to undergo Compulsory Rotating Medical Internship (CRMI) for two years to make up for the clinical training which could not be physically attended by them during the undergraduate medicine course in foreign institutes as also to familiarise them with the practice of medicine under the Indian conditions,” Pawar said.

‘Covid on slow & steady decline’

• Covid is on a slow and steady decline in the country, the government has informed Parliament
• “As on December 8, a total of 4,244 active cases of Covid were reported,” said MoS (Health) Bharati Pawar in response to a query
• The minister added that only 23 cases of Mpox virus were reported as on December 8. tns