Med school for IIT-Kgp

Updated on: Thursday, August 12, 2010

IIT Kharagpur is going ahead with its medical college project despite reports that the expert panel set up under health ministry to look into the feasibility of medical courses under the IITs has argued against the project.

“If the plan was scrapped, we would have been intimated by the ministry. Since there is no such intimation as of now, there is every reason to think that the plan stands and we are working accordingly. We have already sent our plan to the MHRD,” said the deputy director of the institute, A K Majumdar.

The institute will start construction of the medical college building that will have both undergraduate and post graduate medical courses in place this year.

Interestingly, the minister of human resource development, Kapil Sibal, whose ministry controls the IITs, announced at the institute’s convocation on July 17 that the IITs are going ahead with their plan of starting medical education. This is after they have established themselves as the country’s premier tech training brand.

IIT Kharagpur was the first one in the chain to float the idea of a medical college because for some years now it has been running a master’s programme in medical technology, that has been seeing leading doctors of the country enrolling. The idea of a medical college was a take off from this.

A meeting held in Delhi last week triggered speculations that the IITs would be denied the permission. The meeting was convened by the expert committee and it reportedly advised the health ministry not to allow the IITs to start medical courses because the Medical Council of India will not like it.

The IITs had apparently asked for accreditation by a statutory and autonomous organisation for the medical course, which means that that they be allowed complete autonomy to offer undergraduate or postgraduate medical courses, free from the Medical Council of India (MCI) norms.

The IITs had sought statutory institute status as is currently granted to AIIMS; PGI, Chandigarh; JIPMER, (all three under the Health Ministry) and Sri Chitra Trinunal Institute for Medical Sciences and Technology, Thiruvananthapuram (under the Ministry of Science and Technology).

Of these institutes, JIPMER and AIIMS offer both UG and PG medical courses while the PGI, Chandigarh, and Sri Chitra Institute offer PG courses. They are the only statutory medical institutes free from MCI regulation.

The IITs, which fall under the HRD Ministry, enjoy statutory status in terms of the engineering and technology courses they offer. They sought approval of the health ministry to amend the IIT Act to give them autonomy to offer medical courses as well.

Med school for IIT-Kgp

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