NMC bill to be introduced in LS on Monday: Vardhan

The National Medical Commission Bill, which seeks to replace the Medical Council of India and usher in major changes in the country's medical education sector, will introduced in the Lok Sabha on July 22, Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said Saturday.

The minister said the Bill was supposed to be introduced in Parliament on Friday but could not be done so due to some technical reasons.

"I can only say right now day after tomorrow (July 22), I will be introducing the National Medical Commission Bill which will replace the Medical Council of India.

"Right now, as you know the Medical Council of India has already been superseded and replaced by a board of governors," he told reporters on the sidelines of a programme at the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR)-Indian Institute of Chemical Technology here.

"The National Medical Commission Bill has been approved by the cabinet... I was thinking of getting it introduced yesterday, but there were technical formalities, so on Monday morning I'll be introducing the Bill in parliament," Vardhan said, expressing hope that it will be passed and becomes a law.

On the Ayushman Bharat scheme, the minister said as of now, only Telangana, Odisha, Delhi and West Bengal had opted out of the BJP-led NDA government's flagship programme.

He said he had written to the chief ministers concerned requesting them to participate in the scheme in the national interest.

He hoped that Odisha would join the bandwagon soon.

"West Bengal had joined (in Ayushman Bharat) earlier and in view of elections they came out. We will continue to pursue because it is in the larger interest of the people. About 10.7 crore people are getting benefited under the Ayushman Bharat scheme. I would request the Telangana chief minister also to become part of the scheme," he said.

Earlier, he inaugurated the Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) facility at the CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) here.

The Union minister also laid the foundation for a new skilling, training and lecture hall complex at the CCMB and 'scale up facility for agrochemicals' to be constructed at the pilot plant complex of CSIR-IICT.