The controversy over the West Bengal Medical Council’s cancellation of five medical registrations has exposed a larger question than whether the documents submitted by those doctors were genuine. The dispute concerns how a statutory regulator exercises its powers, whether its internal safeguards are being followed and what happens when an institution responsible for protecting patients is itself accused of operating without adequate transparency.
According to a report by Anandabazar – West Bengal, the council cancelled or began the process of cancelling the registrations of five doctors after the Bihar medical council reportedly identified their certificates as fake. Council members and other doctors quoted in the report do not oppose removing registrations obtained through fraudulent documents. Their objection is to the procedure adopted by the council president, who is alleged to have issued the direction without convening a meeting of the council’s executive committee.
That distinction is central. A regulator’s authority does not rest only on the correctness of its final decision. It also rests on whether the decision is made through a process that allows the affected person to respond, records the reasoning and follows the institution’s governing law. If a registration was secured through forged documents, cancellation may appear straightforward. But the law described in the report still requires an investigation and procedural safeguards before a doctor is removed from the register.
The report says the Bengal Medical Act, 1914, amended in 1954, gives the council the power to remove a registered doctor for professional misconduct, conviction in a criminal case or fraudulent registration. Before such action is taken, the doctor is to be served a show-cause notice and given an opportunity to present a defence, including through a lawyer if necessary. A finding of guilt requires the support of two-thirds of the members present at an executive committee meeting.
These requirements create an institutional chain of accountability. The process begins with an allegation or documentary concern, moves through notice and response, and ends with a recorded decision by the body authorised to take it. The controversy reported by Anandabazar – West Bengal is that this chain may have been shortened or bypassed in the five-registration case.
West Bengal Medical Council president and former legislator Sudipta Roy told the newspaper that the Bihar council had confirmed that the certificates were fake. He said the president had the power to take an urgent decision and that the direction had been circulated to all members. This is the council president’s stated justification for acting without first convening a meeting.
Other members have questioned that interpretation. Government-nominated council member Kalyan Ashis Mukherjee said that calling the accused doctors for an investigation could have clarified how the registrations were obtained and what the alleged fraud involved. He alleged that the president acted quickly without calling a meeting because a wider inquiry could expose corruption. That allegation is not established by the supplied report, but it demonstrates why the procedure has become the main point of conflict.
The council president rejected another part of the criticism, saying that one or two members were deliberately preventing meetings from taking place. The report also says that some council members are preparing to write to him over the decision. The West Bengal Doctors’ Forum president, Kaushik Chaki, said that there should be no objection to removing names obtained through fake documents, but warned that taking such action without following the council’s law could set a precedent.
The immediate dispute therefore has two separate dimensions. The first is professional integrity: whether people who submitted false documents were allowed to obtain medical registration. The second is regulatory integrity: whether the institution responsible for identifying and removing such registrations followed the law while doing so. The existence of a serious allegation against a doctor does not eliminate the regulator’s obligation to conduct a lawful inquiry. Equally, procedural objections should not be used to obscure the need to examine whether fraudulent registrations were granted.
The report places the registration controversy within a broader series of allegations against the council over the past two years. Doctors have alleged that the state government has not taken action because the council is an autonomous body. The allegations cited include construction of a guesthouse without a tender, the reported stay of former RG Kar Medical College principal Sandip Ghosh there while evading attention, renting space to a restaurant without following rules, irregularities in elections, favouritism in recruitment and inconsistencies in the salary recorded in the file concerning a contractual employee.
The council has also been criticised over the reported failure to convene meetings of its executive committee for a long period. The council president has been accused of receiving more than a lakh of rupees in vehicle bills. Roy told the newspaper that he regularly visits the office, that the vehicle expenses were due to him and that he had received several months of pending bills. These are allegations and responses, not findings established by an inquiry in the supplied material.
Taken together, the claims point to a governance problem involving the basic functions of a professional regulator: procurement, leasing, elections, recruitment, record-keeping, meetings, expenditure and disciplinary action. Each issue may require a different investigation, but they share a common institutional question. Who is responsible for checking the council when its autonomy is cited as a reason for limiting government intervention?
Autonomy is intended to protect regulatory decisions from day-to-day political or administrative pressure. It is not the same as exemption from law, audit or public scrutiny. A medical council exercises public functions because registration determines who may legally practise modern medicine. Its decisions affect patients, hospitals, doctors and the credibility of the state’s health system. That public role makes procedural transparency especially important.
The health minister, Sharadwata Mukhopadhyay, told the newspaper that medical organisations had protested over the matter and that legal action was being taken. The supplied report does not specify the form, scope or timetable of that legal action. It also does not establish whether an independent inquiry has been ordered into the wider allegations against the council.
The evidence currently available supports a narrower conclusion: the council president and critics within the profession disagree over whether urgent authority allowed the five registrations to be cancelled without a meeting, while the law cited in the report sets out notice, defence and executive committee requirements. The report does not provide the council’s full order, the alleged certificates, the Bihar council’s communication or the complete legal interpretation on which the president relied. Those documents would be necessary to determine whether the action was legally valid.
The case also reveals why registration systems require more than a list of names. They depend on document verification at the entry stage, clear responsibility between state and regional councils, secure records and an auditable disciplinary process. If fake documents were accepted, the failure may have occurred before the cancellation dispute began. If the cancellation was not properly authorised, the corrective action may itself become vulnerable to challenge. In both situations, patients and legitimate doctors bear the consequences of institutional weakness.
The next steps will determine whether the controversy becomes another unresolved dispute or leads to a documented review of the council’s functioning. Key questions include whether the five doctors were issued show-cause notices, whether they were allowed to respond, whether the executive committee considered the evidence, how the alleged documents were accepted and what legal action the health department intends to pursue. The wider allegations concerning procurement, leasing, recruitment, elections, meetings and expenditure also remain to be tested through formal records and inquiry.
What the episode confirms is that medical regulation is not only about removing ineligible practitioners. It is also about ensuring that the regulator itself can demonstrate legality, consistency and accountability. Until the relevant orders, records and inquiry findings are made available, the central facts of the five-registration case remain contested even as the demand for a transparent investigation grows.
