The Center informed the Supreme Court on Thursday that there are no legislative procedures in place to allow them to be accommodated in local medical colleges, which represents a setback for the thousands of Indian undergraduate medical students who were studying in Ukraine but were compelled to return due to the conflict with Russia. According to a statement made by the Center in an affidavit, the National Medical Commission (NMC) has not yet authorised the transfer of any international medical students to Indian medical colleges or institutes or their lodging.
The government filed a statement in response to a set of petitions filed by undergraduate medical students in their first through fourth years at various overseas medical colleges and institutes, who are primarily seeking transfer to medical colleges in India in their respective semesters. The government stated that there are no provisions under the Indian Medical Council Act of 1956 or the National Medical Commission Act of 2019 as well as the Regulations to accept or transfer medical students from any foreign medical institutes/colleges to Indian medical colleges.
However, it was noted that in order to assist and support these returning students who were unable to complete their MBBS programmes in Ukraine, NMC in consultation with the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) has issued a Public Notice dated September 6, 2022, indicating that NMC would accept completion of their remaining programmes abroad (with the approval of parent university/Institution in Ukraine). After they have completed their remaining courses, the parent institutions in Ukraine are expected to grant the certificate, completion, or degree, according to the government.
Even though the public notice from September 6 states that there is no opposition to the academic mobility programme, which entails temporarily relocating the affected foreign students in different foreign countries around the world, it is unclear, according to the students, whether Indian universities fall under the category of ‘universities in different countries globally’. These students, according to the government, claim that when they sought for academic mobility in the first semester of the academic year 2022-2023, their respective Ukrainian Medical Universities rejected them.
‘The aforementioned affidavit (of the student) is respectfully submitted to be utterly baseless and false. It is argued that the aforementioned academic mobility programme was only established for students who were unable to finish their education owing to the warlike conditions in Ukraine’,the Center reported. It went on to say that the phrase ‘global mobility’ in the public notice dated September 6 should not be interpreted as suggesting housing for these students in Indian colleges or universities because current Indian immigration laws do not permit students to come to India from other countries to attend universities.
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