The governing body of All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) is slated to meet on Thursday for possibly taking up the contentious issue of enforcing a rotation policy for the various heads of department. However, the issue does not figure in the official agenda of the meeting shared with the governing body (GB) members. Rotation of headship after every five years is one of the key recommendations of the MS Valiathan committee, which was formed to suggest measures to improve the functioning of AIIMS in 2006-07.
According to sources the meeting has been called on the directions of the Health Ministry. This meeting is conducted within two months of the previous meeting the minutes of which were not approved till the time the notice of the convening meeting was taken out.
“The Valiathan committee did not function as a democratic committee, and the report is the sole handiwork of Dr Valiathan. More importantly, the committee had no representation from non-medical academia (especially humanities) or civil society,” said AIIMS RDA president, Harjit Singh Bhatti.
“And moreover, when the Parliamentary Committee itself has debunked this committee”s report, there is no reason why it should be taken up at the GB just to favour some vested interests,” he said.
According to sources at AIIMS, the Valiathan committee report, which was criticised in the 87th report of the Rajya Sabha Parliamentary Standing Committee and by several members of Parliament such as Sushma Swaraj and Jyoti Mirdha, is being used to promote an individual as the head of department at AIIMS.
A senior faculty member said the issue of rotating headship came to the governing body and institute body of the AIIMS on several occasions in the past but because of its negative repercussions, it was never implemented.
“No study has been made to understand the real problems of rotating headship in these institutes, implementation of which will lead to instability and lack of discipline in the departments and the developmental work will suffer as it will not be possible to conceive, plan and implement a project in such a short duration,” a senior faculty said.