To prevent ragging in medical colleges, the National Medical Commission has proposed that first-year students should be accommodated in separate hostels in teaching hospitals across the country.
Senior students’ access to the hostels for freshers should be strictly vetted by the medical college authorities. In its draft regulations, NMC has emphasised sensitising students, authorities against ragging and lay down an outline of an anti-ragging committee to monitor and specify disciplinary action that would be taken against those involved in ragging.
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“Freshers shall be lodged, as far as may be, in a separate hostel block or wing and the institution shall ensure that access of seniors to accommodation allotted to freshers is strictly monitored by wardens, security guards and
other staff of the institution,” the draft read.
According to the proposal titled “Draft guidelines, rules and regulations for the prevention and prohibition of ragging”, “Any disorderly conduct whether by words spoken or written or by an act that has the effect of teasing, treating
or handling with rudeness any other student, indulging in rowdy or undisciplined activities which cause or is likely to cause annoyance, hardship
or psychological harm, or to raise fear or apprehension thereof in a fresher or a junior student or asking the students to do any act or perform something which student will not in the ordinary course, and which has the effect of causing or generating a sense of shame or embarrassment so as to adversely affect the physique or psyche of a fresher or a junior student.”
Some teaching faculties attached with medical colleges in Kolkata felt that the NMC’s move to streamline the hostel allotment system for the first year MBBS students would thwart ragging in teaching hospitals across the country.
The new academic session for the first-year MBBS course in medical colleges begins in August and ends in September.