In a landmark decision, which would completely eliminate the fraudulent practice of ghost faculty prevalent in the medical colleges (especially private) of the country, the Medical Council of India (MCI) has asked all the colleges to submit Aadhaar number and biometric details of their staff. The apex body of medical education has even appointed a Hyderabad based IT firm to implement the plan across the country. Moreover the MCI has also decided to issue Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags to all the faculty members and the students of the medical colleges.
The decision of MCI though belated would mean that the private medical colleges would now no longer be able to appoint ghost faculties. A ghost faculty is a fictitious faculty which a college claims to be its faculty member but in actual practice such faculty exists only on paper and these ghosts make a brief appearance when there is a MCI team visiting the college. The system of ghost faculty is beneficial proposition for both the college and the doctors as the former don’t have to appoint high paying permanent members of faculty and the later getting some monetory benefit in lieu of putting their name on the attendance register of a college.
The MCI mulled over the proposal in a meeting with the representatives of State medical councils on August 19. The agenda of the meeting was implementation of e-governance project. The Deputy registrar of Uttarakhand Medical Council, Dr DD Choudhary who attended the meeting told The Pioneer that the issues like maintaining online records of human resource details of the medical colleges, issue of unique identification cards to the faculty members and the students were discussed in the meeting. He informed that the project would cost an amount of Rs 40 crores and the task was handed over to Bodhtree Consulting limited and technological solutions, Hyderabad.
Dr Choudhary claimed that the decision to link the Aadhaar numbers and issue RIFD cards to the faculty members would totally cease the illegal and rampant practice of Ghost faculty. “This decision would have deep impact on the functioning of medical education system and I prophesize that many private medical colleges of the country would get closed. Now a person can not get enrolled in two different colleges and the colleges would have to employ permanent faculty members as per the MCI norms,’’ he said.
Confirming the development, the Principal of Government Doon Medical College (GDMC) Dr Pradip Bharati Gupta said that college has received a letter in this regard. He added that the orders of MCI would be complied and the biometric attendance system in GDMC and the associated hospital would be installed till December.