Nepal Medical Council (NMC) has decided not to follow the Ministry of Education’s directive to allocate seats to the controversial National Medical College to run MBBS programme.

NMC Registrar Dr Dilip Sharma said the council will take time to review the case and no decision will be made for now. 

In the meetings held by the NMC over the last three days, it was agreed that no decisions will be taken in haste on the medical college based at Ghattekulo in the Capital. It was also decided that the NMC will not entrain any case on the medical college until and unless the controversy surrounding the latter, including the affiliation row, is settled. 

The NMC was dragged into the case by the ministry after the latter started putting pressure to allocate seats to National Medical College. Citing a Supreme Court order, the ministry, in a letter on October 31, had asked the NMC to assign medical seats to the medical college, which is an extension of the Birgunj-based National Medical College owned by CPN-UML leader Basruddin Ansari.

National Medical College does not fulfil the basic requirements—a hospital under operation and required number of faculties and staff— to run an MBBS programme.

The letter from the ministry is also against the agreements between the government and Dr Govinda KC, who has been demanding that no medical college should be established in Kathmandu Valley. The main argument of Dr KC is that medical college, apart from delivering quality health care, also brings along development in places where it is established and hence they should be built outside the Capital. 

Following reports that National Medical College was not well-equipped—human resource and infrastructure-wise—to run MBBS course, the Tribhuvan University on September 3 had decided to put the affiliation decision on hold, and subsequently on September 6 scrapped the affiliation.