Internal panel to look into rotation of headship issue: AIIMS

An internal committee will be constituted to evaluate the enforcement of a rotation policy for heads of department at AIIMS, the governing body decided today.
Rotation of headship after every five years was one of the key recommendations of the M S Valiathan committee, which was formed to suggest measures to improve the functioning of the All India Institute Of Medical Sciences during the Congress dispensation in 2006-07.
The contentious issue of enforcing the policy was discussed at length at the governing body (GB) meeting chaired by Union Health Minister J P Nadda.
"The GB today discussed the Valiathan committee report recommendations, including enforcing rotation of heads of department at AIIMS, and it was decided that an internal committee will be constituted which will evaluate the policy to ascertain its feasibility," a faculty said.

According to a source at AIIMS, today's governing body was called on the directions of the Health Ministry, barely two months after the previous meeting.
Several faculty members of the premier institute are against the implementation of the rotation of headships and other recommendations of the Valiathan committee report, which was criticised in the 87th report of the Rajya Sabha Parliamentary Standing Committee and by members of Parliament.

According to a senior faculty, the issue of rotating headship came to the governing body and institute body of AIIMS on several occasions in the past, but because of its negative repercussions, it was never implemented.

Barring earlier committees, no recent committees, including the Venkatachalam committee and the Dr Balram Airan committee, recommended rotating headship.
The institute body in its meeting on January 16, 2012, even recommended scrapping of the Valiathan committee report.
"No study has been made to understand the real problems of rotating headships in these institutes, implementation of which will lead to instability and lack of discipline in the departments and the developmental work will suffer as it will not be possible to conceive, plan and implement a project in such a short duration," a senior faculty said.
Another faculty said there will be serious administrative anomalies.

"The head of department despite being junior will chair the committees consisting of seniors. Nowhere in the western world, the concept of rotating headship is followed in the medical field," another faculty said.
The 87th report of the Rajya Sabha Parliamentary Standing Committee on the functioning of AIIMS had observed certain deficiencies in the report, saying Valiathan himself admitted that none of the other committee members attended its proceedings on a regular basis and he submitted its report despite Prasanna Hota's, then Union health secretary, requests for an extension to accommodate further debate.
The Valiathan committee comprised four members, of whom Dr M K Bhan did not attend any meeting, and Prasanna Hota and Dr R K Shrivastava gave dissenting notes.

"The Valiathan committee did not function as a democratic committee, and the report is the sole handiwork of Dr Valiathan. More importantly, the committee had no representation from non-medical academia (especially humanities) or civil society," AIIMS RDA president Harjit Singh Bhatti said.