"The Bill cannot be recommended in the present form. We recommend to the Ministry to withdraw the Bill and bring forward a fresh bill after sufficiently addressing all the views and concerns expressed by stakeholders," Parliamentary Standing Committee on Health said in its report on 'National Commission for Human Resources for Health Bill, 2011'.
The Bill was introduced in Rajya Sabha on December 22 last year after prolonged negotiations between the Health and the Human Resource Development Ministries. The latter had insisted that medical research comes under its purview.
The dispute between the two ministries were resolved after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's intervention. The Health Ministry relented and gave medical research under HRD Ministry's 'Higher Education and Research Bill, 2011'.
The panel has also asked the Health Ministry to include medical research (currently covered by Higher Education and Research Bill 2011 of the HRD Ministry) under the proposed medical regulator.
It has objected to the fact that the proposed regulator in the Bill neither provides any representation to state governments despite health being a state subject nor does it provide for elections to appoint members of the regulator.
The Bill rejected by the Committee seeks to dissolve the four existing health regulators