Centre may appoint independent regulators for professional services

The government is planning to appoint independent regulators for services such as medicine, law, chartered accountancy, cost accountancy and company secretaryship.

According to sources in the commerce ministry, the existing structure of a regulator-cum-professional body for these services has resulted in several alleged instances of conflict of interest.

This hurt the credibility and reputation of these bodies and hampered India’s attempts to secure Mutual Recognition Agreements (MRA) with other countries to enable easier temporary movement of skilled workers and professionals across borders, the sources said.

The independent regulators will maintain distance from the professional bodies similar to the situation in developed countries, they said.

MRAs are pacts where two or more nations recognise each other’s compliance assessments to ensure that services, products and processes meet relevant technical norms.

The bodies being referred to by the commerce ministry include Medical Council of India (MCI), Bar Council of India (BCI), Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI), Institute of Cost Accountants of India and Institute of Company Secretaries of India (ICSI). All these are statutory bodies under an Act of Parliament.

The ministry was initially considering preparing a comprehensive plan for appointing independent regulators for all these service segments and then coming out with a Cabinet note for inputs from other ministries. However, the “wholesale approach” has been junked.

The current plan is to initiate discussions with each of the ministries concerned (health, law and corporate affairs in this case). Then,separate Cabinet notes can be put up by the ministries on the need for independent regulators for these services, the sources said.

The move comes in the backdrop of the Supreme Court recently citing a Parliamentary panel report to state that the MCI “was repeatedly found short of fulfilling its mandated responsibilities” and that the “quality of medical education was at its lowest ebb…”.

The apex court, noting the instances of corruption in MCI, had set up an Oversight Committee to supervise the council’s functions and scrutinise its policy decisions.#casansaar (The Hindu)