New Delhi: The Government of India has turned down the plea of medical students from India who have returned from Ukraine due to war.
As per information received from the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), about 20,000 Indian students including over 500 from Odisha have returned from Ukraine.
Foreign Medical Students/Graduates are either covered under “Screening Test Regulations, 2002” or “Foreign Medical Graduate Licentiate Regulations, 2021”. There are no such provisions in the Indian Medical Council Act 1956 & the National Medical Commission (NMC) Act, 2019 as well as the Regulations to accommodate or transfer medical students from any foreign medical institutes to Indian medical colleges, said Union MoS for Health and Family Welfare, Bharati Pravin Pawar.
She said the eligibility requirement for taking admission in an undergraduate medical course in a foreign medical institution Regulation, 2002 provides for that any Indian citizen/overseas citizen of India intending to obtain primary medical qualification from any medical institution outside India, on or after May 2018, shall have to mandatorily qualify the National Eligibility-cum Entrance Test (NEET) for admission to MBBS course.
The result of the NEET shall be deemed to be treated as the eligibility certificate for such persons and no separate permission required from NMC, she said.
The Union Minister made it clear that no permission has been given by the NMC to transfer or accommodate any foreign medical students in any Indian medical institute/university.
As per information received from MEA, the Indian Embassy in Kyiv has communicated with all the concerned Universities in Ukraine for providing transcript and other documents in a smooth manner to the students. All details have been provided on the website of the Embassy to assist students to address any related issues, she added.
Notably, in May this year, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik had written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking his intervention for continuance of studies of students returned from war-ravaged Ukraine.
Naveen had urged Mr.Modi’s intervention with the National Medical Commission and the Ministries concerned to facilitate continuance of the study of such students in medical colleges in India from the stage from which their studies in Ukraine have been disrupted on account of the war.