Cabinet approves scrapping of redundant provision related to

Soon, it will not be mandatory for the Dental Council of India to have as government nominees two representatives of dentists who migrated from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar in the late forties and early seventies.
The Union Cabinet today approved a proposed amendment in the Dentists Act, 1948 to drop the redundant provision related to representation in the apex dental body and state dental councils.
As per the existing provisions of the Act, it was required to have representation of two dentists registered in 'Part B' as central government nominees in the Dental Council of India, said a senior health ministry official.

Part B of the Dental Council register includes those dentists who do not have recognised qualification but practice and have been granted registration.
There were dentists practising in present day Pakistan but had migrated to India after Partition and lacked proof of their medical qualification, the official said.
They were registered after authorities here were satisfied about their qualification. Similarly, Part B also registers dentists who had come to India from Bangladesh and then Burma (Myanmar) in 1972.

The official said that 942 dentists are registered in Part B. Since the seventies, no fresh registrations have been made in Part B.

Part A of the register includes dentists with recognised degrees and numbers nearly 1.55 lakh, the official.
According to the proposed amendment in the Dentists Act, now it will not be mandatory for the Council to have dentists from Part B register to be appointed as central government nominees.
Similarly, it will not be mandatory for the State Dental Councils to have a member from the part B.
"With a view to reducing the redundancy of provisions on representation, the central government has decided to delete these provisions so that their representation does not remain mandatory any more," an official statement said.