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| The ICARE institute in Haldia. Picture by Bishwarup Dutta |
Dec. 6: The Medical Council of India (MCI) has scrapped the recognition of the private college run by a Lakshman Seth-headed NGO, but the authorities continued to assure the students that the move would be reversed.
“Yesterday, we signed the documents to scrap the recognition of ICARE Institute of Medical Sciences and Research. The decision will be conveyed to the college authorities and the state government tomorrow,” MCI secretary Sangeeta Sharma told The Telegraph from Delhi today.
“There is no question of an MCI team visiting Haldia for further inspection to renew the recognition,” she added.
Seth, however, said: “The MCI will send a team to the medical college soon so that we can continue running the institution.”
The Bengal government had on November 17 cancelled the college’s essentiality certificate, mandatory for an MCI recognition.
The students and guardians said the college authorities had assured them that the cancellation would be revoked.
“The authorities have told us that an MCI team will arrive shortly. They said there was no information about the council cancelling the recognition,” said Monoranjan Samanta, who had spent around Rs 5 lakh to get his daughter admitted.
“We are being assured that things are okay. I asked the authorities whether there would be any meeting with us regarding the MCI issue but they said no such thing was planned,” said Satarupa Nandi, an MBBS student from Barrackpore.
Vishal Anand, a first-year student, said he was unaware of the MCI move. “The authorities haven’t told us anything about the MCI de-recognition. Classes are being held like before,” said Anand, from Kishanganj in Bihar.
The MCI and the Dental Council of India had issued notices to ICARE after an inspection found that the institute was sharing space with a dental college.
The college authorities today said they had completed the process of shifting the dental college to a separate building.
“We haven’t been informed by the MCI about the de-recognition. Now there wouldn’t be any problem as the two colleges are in separate buildings,” said Ashish Lahiri, secretary of ICARE.
But a source said that construction of the new building where the dental college would be shifted was still under way.
The medical college got MCI recognition in June this year after the essentiality certificate was issued in 2010 by the then Left Front government. The certificate was, however, issued provisionally as infrastructure for the medical college was not adequate.
The college has 88 students, each of whom paid capitation fee of Rs 4.5 lakh on an average.
The ICARE institute is one of the only two private medical colleges in the state. The other one is KPC Medical College in Jadavpur.