A protest by doctors aligned with the BJP outside the West Bengal Medical Council office in Salt Lake has intensified scrutiny of alleged fake medical practitioners, after five registrations were cancelled and two of the names were found to have the same registration number.
Doctors from government and private institutions participated in Tuesday’s demonstration and demanded the resignation of state medical council president Sudipta Roy and vice-president Sushanta Roy. Protesters also sought the resignation of Nirmal Maji, a former president of the council. The demonstration was held outside the council’s office, with the participants raising slogans and displaying photographs of current and former office-bearers.
The protesters alleged that weak oversight by the council had allowed fake doctors to operate in different parts of the state. Five complaints have so far been filed at Bidhannagar South police station in connection with the alleged fake doctors, according to the report.
The West Bengal Medical Council had recently published a newspaper notice stating that the registrations of Sheikh Yunus Hasan, Uttam Maiti, Hafizur Haldar, Julfikar Mondal and Saidul Haque had been cancelled. The notice showed that Julfikar and Saidul had the same registration number, 36442. The report did not state whether the police complaints had resulted in arrests or whether the registration discrepancy had been conclusively attributed to deliberate fraud.
The case has also prompted a wider review of medical registrations. Sources in the state health department said records were being re-examined for doctors who had registered with the West Bengal Medical Council on the basis of registrations from medical councils in other states since 2010. The number of registrations under review is at least 6,000, according to the report.
The re-verification process places the medical council at the centre of a wider administrative question: how state-level registration systems authenticate credentials issued elsewhere and identify duplicate or irregular records before doctors begin practising. The available report does not provide details of the verification method, the timeline for completing the exercise or the number of registrations that may ultimately be affected.
Representatives of the Association of Private Hospitals and Nursing Homes, members nominated by the BJP to the state medical council, government doctors and political representatives attended the protest. A delegation was also submitted to the state health minister at Swasthya Bhavan. Some doctors expressed dissatisfaction with the police response to the issue.
The council has denied all allegations against it. President Sudipta Roy said that the registrations of five alleged fake doctors had already been cancelled and that registrations of doctors who graduated outside West Bengal during the past 10 years would also be examined. The next stages will depend on the police complaints, the council’s verification exercise and any administrative action arising from the review.
