The government on Monday tabled two Bills to extend the time required to reconstitute the Central Council of Indian Medicine and Central Council of Homeopathy to two years instead of one year as envisaged in the NCIM 2020 and NCH 2020 Acts passed last year.
These two Bills introduced on Monday are called National Commission for Indian System of Medicine (NCIM) (Amendment) Bill, 2021 and National Commission for Homeopathy (NCH) (Amendment) Bill, 2021.
The amendment Bills were required to be introduced because even though the Acts were live since September 20 last year, the national commissions could not be set up immediately as nomination of members and recruitment of staff for the secretariats was taking time.
In the case of NCIM, as the tenure of its Board of Governors was coming to an end on April 23 this year, the government came out with Ordinance on April 22 to extend the period. Similarly, in the case of NCH, such as Ordinance was passed on May 16, a day before the term of the existing official body was coming to an end.
Subsequently, the NCIM was constituted on June 11 and NCH on July 5. The newly-introduced Bills, however, are intended to keep the validity of all decisions taken by the Boards of Governors of NCIM and NCH till these bodies were constituted.
These commissions have the responsibility in setting syllabus for undergraduate postgraduate and research programmes in medical colleges offering courses in Indian Systems of Medicine and Homeopathy and approving new colleges across the country, among other things relating to education.