SC directs NMC to help Ukraine return MBBS students within two months

Months after Indian students returned back to their home country due to the Ukraine crisis and Covid, the Supreme Court has decided to step in and help these students. The Supreme Court has now ordered the National Medical Commission (NMC) to frame a scheme in two months permitting students to complete clinical training in medical colleges here.

The bench of justices Hemant Gupta and V Ramasubramanian was listening to an appeal of the NMC against a Madras High Court order asking it to allow students of a Chinese University to provisionally register in India. However, the Supreme Court concluded that there was nothing wrong in denying the provisional registration.

“No doubt, the pandemic has thrown new challenges to the entire world including the students but granting provisional registration to complete an internship to a student



who has not undergone clinical training would be compromising with the health of the citizens of any country and the health infrastructure at large,” news agency PTI quoted the bench.

However, the bench understood the plight of the Indian students who could not complete their clinical/practical training in the abroad universities due to the Covid crisis and Ukraine-Russia war. Talking about such students, the Supreme Court ordered NMC “to frame a scheme as a one time measure within two months to allow the student and such similarly situated students who have not actually completed clinical training to undergo clinical training in India in the medical colleges which may be identified by the appellant for a limited duration as may be specified by the appellant, on such charges which the appellant determines,” Justice Gupta, writing the judgement, said.