Chandigarh: As many as 148 students of a Haryana private medical college have written to PM Narendra Modi and President Ram Nath Kovind seeking permission to die, or admission in a government institute.
The college they are studying in hasn’t been able to admit another batch after theirs, and the students say they are daunted by the career uncertainty spelt by the institute’s battered image.
The authorities at World College of Medical Sciences and Research, Jhajjar, however, have dismissed the students’ concerns as unfounded, saying a bar on fresh admissions doesn’t affect existing students.
The affected students constitute the maiden, and only, batch at the institute, which was founded in 2016. The first batch, 2016-17, was the only one for which the college had permission from the Medical Council of India (MCI), the erstwhile medical education regulator, to admit students.
Since then, it has been barred by the MCI and its successor, ‘the Board of Governors in Supersession of the MCI’, from making any fresh admissions. The college has even failed to get permission for the 2016 batch renewed, stoking fear among students that their admission is no longer valid.
According to the students, they are scared that by the time they pass the four-year MBBS course, the college would have shut down and their degrees reduced to pieces of paper.
“Everyone around the area where our college and hospital is located already believes that this college is shut down,” said Neeraj Ahlawat, one of the students.
“There is skeletal faculty in the college and barely any patients in the hospital. Recently, I had duty in the ENT department and the entire month I saw two patients, one of whom was my class fellow,” he added.
In their letter to the PM and the President, the students have said they “don’t want to live”.
“We don’t want to live. Please give permission of mercy killing/euthanasia to all of us,” the students added in the letter, which is dated 27 August and also addressed to Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar and the Punjab and Haryana High Court chief justice.
“Please make our soul to rest in peace. We can’t fight anymore as this country doesn’t need us.”
Speaking to ThePrint, Ahlawat said the letter was their last resort.
“What option do we have? The college is not able to provide even the basic facilities, due to which the MCI, after repeated inspections, has not found the college fit for recognition. The MCI is not going to recognise our degrees,” he added.
As he said this, Ahlawat produced a newspaper clipping about a similar experience suffered by students of a medical college in Jharkhand. When they graduated, he said, the MCI failed to recognise their degrees.
The college authorities, however, have dubbed the students “nuisance-makers”.
“We have not been given permission by the MCI to conduct fresh admissions but that does not impact the career of these students who are already admitted,” said Dr Nityanand, the director of the college.
“These students are regularly appearing in exams and that is how they have reached the third year. If the OPD and the hospital were not running, how could we have managed to take their exams?” he added, pointing out that the final exams were overseen and conducted by Haryana’s BDS University of Health Sciences, the regulating authority of medical colleges in the state.
An official of the Board of Governors told ThePrint that while the students’ career would not be jeopardised by the bar on fresh admissions alone, their fears were not unfounded. The possibility of such a college shutting down or functioning with skeletal facilities is very high, the official added.
“If this happens,” the official said, “it is for the state government to take responsibility of the students who are already admitted and write to the regulator seeking permission to shift them to other colleges.”
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Jinxed college
In their letter to the PM and the President, the students have attached the various assessment reports prepared by the medical education regulator.
According to the reports, when the MCI arrived at the college for an inspection in 2017, it found the institute lacking the requisite faculty and other infrastructure.
The college was subsequently barred from fresh admissions for two consecutive years, 2017-18 and 2018-19.
Then, in August 2017, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) arrested the chairman of the college, Narender Singh, and his son Kunwar Nishant Singh, along with a third person, for allegedly using corrupt means to get clearance for the college from officials of the union health ministry.
The trio was subsequently released on bail, and the case remains underway.
In September last year, BDS University of Health Sciences conducted an inspection of the college and noted that while infrastructure was adequate, other facilities, including those for indoor and outdoor patients, didn’t meet the bar, and neither did the faculty.
The following December, the MCI found similar deficiencies in yet another inspection.
The college subsequently reported to the regulator that it had complied with all the requirements, but, in February this year, when a team visited the premises to verify the claim, it was not allowed to conduct an inspection.
The team, nevertheless, reported that the emergency wing of the hospital was lying locked and there were no patients in the facility. They were reportedly told that the students were preparing for exams and the faculty was on leave.
The regulator carried out another assessment in April this year and reported that the atmosphere in the college was “intimidating and threatening”.
“The hospital was full of patients, all or most were fake. The faculty had probably arrived only after coming to know about the assessment team,” it wrote. “Interaction with students revealed a pathetic state — no teaching staff, no patients, shown only at the time of MCI inspections.”
Students demand shifting out
Following these unflattering assessments, the college was once again denied permission to admit students this year.
Given these circumstances, the students have requested in their letter to be shifted to other medical colleges in the state.
“We have met the state government authorities several times, but nothing has come of it,” said student Yogita Yadav, holding up a host of applications and request letters sent by them to the additional chief secretary for medical education and research in Haryana, Amit Jha, and the state director for medical education and research, Raj Narayan Kaushik.
While Jha could not be contacted despite repeated attempts, Kaushik said he was not aware about the problems being faced by the students.
“They are primarily the responsibility of the college but I will look into the matter,” he said.
College authorities, meanwhile, have rubbished the students’ request for a transfer, saying it was a ploy for admission to a better institute. “These students want to use this opportunity to shift to the government medical college at Rohtak, in which they were not able to get admission because they were below merit in NEET (the national medical admissions exam),” said Dr Nityanand.
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48 students not 148 students
Kindly inform these students that, as per law before getting Letter of Intent, medical college has to give a bank guarantee of about 10 crore.
The purpose of this bank guarantee is to secure the future of students, if college fails to sustain with the norms. With this 10 Crore MCI is bound to complete the remaining studies of the students in other college.
Students have to approach the Court against MCI regarding the use of this bank guarantee.