Meghalaya Govt to review bond policy to address shortage of doctors

Syllad | The Rising MeghalayaJuly 9, 2024

The state government has decided to review the bond policy to address the shortage of doctors in the state. 

This was informed by Minister incharge Health and Family Welfare Ampareen Lyngdoh on Tuesday after meeting a delegation of the Khasi Students’ Union (KSU), who have sought her intervention to ensure transparency in the allotment of medical seats under the State quota. 

“Why is it that from year to year, the number of medical seats has been increased for students of Meghalaya and why is it that we still have this huge shortage? So we are going to review the bond (policy). We are going to review all these important concerns to ensure that doctors, who availed this from the state of Meghalaya returned to the state of Meghalaya,” Lyngdoh told reporters.

She said that the department is actively engaging with the law department for reviewing and revisiting the bond policy to ensure to a large extent, our doctors and students come back to serve the people of Meghalaya.

“It is for a very long time, doctors graduating from privieges by state are seen not to come back to the state so all of that will be attended to and we hope that as we see that there is competition in the application in the MBBS seats allotment, there should also be a responsible return to the state of Meghalaya,” she added.

According to her, there has been a proportionate increase in the medical seats allocated to Meghalaya, which got 94 seats in 2023.

“We hope that these numbers of seats will continue to proportionately increase (in coming years),” she said. 

The minister however said, “We hope that as and when the court gives the nod to the Government of India to start NEET counselling, we hope that by then we will be in a better place (to say the number of seats alloted to Meghalaya) and will be able to do necessary interventions to ensure that all of these matters are attended to” 

Asked, Lyngdoh said, “The personnel and law are the authorities for advise and guidance to any line department because so far as the allotment of seats as per the reservation policy. So we are now better position to ensure that while selecting and alloting seats for medical colleges as per the reservation policy, we do not violate and we do not disadvantage any of the beneficiaries that should actually benefit from it. We are strictly following this,” adding “And we want to ensure for example, there could be an applicant, who bears a tribal surname but who is not a permanent resident of the state of Meghalaya and does not even have a scheduled tribe certificate, what do we do with such applications – do we treat them just because they bear a surname as indigenous tribals or do we also have to treat them as normal unreserved applicants for the medical seats.”

“These are very peculiar situation. We should not take decision on our own and we should get the guidance and the correct advisory from department of personnel and law so that we may implement this facility for students, applying for medical seats and they should ensure they conform with the law and policy of the state of Meghalaya,” she said. 

To another question, the minister said, “There were certain cases in the past where there has been situation like that but because we need to be properly guided we are taking guidance on these matters to ensure we insulate ourselves from public scrutiny and be blamed for a misapplication of the policy of the reservation policy.”