Mangalore: The Kanachur Educational Institute, Deralakatte, which is 13kms from Mangalore, faked the set up of a fully fledged hospital for a day, with a board “Kanachur Hospital’, strategically placed at the entrance, when the MCI representatives visited the institute for inspection recently.

An eyewitness said the entire event reminded him of scenes from the hit film, Munna Bhai MBBS, with women hired as in-patients, and doctors and nurses brought from other hospitals. Even, the website address ‘www.kanachurhospital.com‘, mentioned on the hospital’s sign board at the entrance, does not exist in reality.

Social activist Muneer Katipalla said there is no hospital called Kanachur Hospital in Mangalore.

Surprisingly, a few days after the inspection, a Kannada daily stated Kanachur Institute was one among the three hospitals to which the state government granted permission to start a medical college. However, the Kanachur Academy does not meet the minimum requirement to have their own full-fledged hospital, which is mandatory to start a medical college.

The Medical Council of India (MCI) is a statutory body for establishing uniform and high standards of medical education in India. According to its guidelines, the institution must have a hospital of its own, on its own land, to start a medical college. The hospital must have a minimum 300 beds, built on 25 acres of land. Besides, the hospital must have a library and specialized medical disciplines such as Cardiology, Orthopedics, ENT, surgery etc.

Strangely, an institute which does not meet any of these important requirements has been granted permission to start a medical college. The MCI was intended to look into these aspects. However, MCI has been subjected to heavy lobbying, political pressure and corruption in regard to the grant of approval to start a medical college, according to sources in the health department.

It should be underlined here that starting a medical college is one of most lucrative businesses.

Kanachur Institute is owned by Kanachur Monu, a congressman. Monu was a Lok Sabha aspirant from the congress party during the May elections. However, he was voted out in the primary elections and Janaradhana Poojary became the party’s official candidate.

Undoubtedly, Kanachur Monu is an influential person who hails from the assembly constituency of state Health minister U.T. Khader.

It’s also said, Dr U.T. Ifthikar, brother of U.T. Khader was among the three MCI representatives. However, it is not known whether the MCI representatives were fooled or they were in the know.

Lashing out, at the way the MCI functions, Dr. Srinivas Kakkilaya called the statutory body as “corrupt”. “I am against privatization of medical or other educational institutions. Instead, the state government could have started a medical college in the government-run Wenlock hospital, Mangalore. The government always bends down to the whims and fancies of the rich and influential. This is one among many such cases”, he said.

Corrigendum: Date: 19/9/2014:

It is learnt that the inspection was carried out by the represenatives of the Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences.

Our continous efforts to contact the RGUHS have been to no avail.