The Pharmacy Council of India (PCI) has issued show cause notices to several pharmacy colleges in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan for flouting rules in running these institutions. The PCI action comes after the surprise inspections carried out on pharmacy colleges in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan in which the PCI has found serious anomalies in the pharmacy colleges of these two states.
PCI chairman Dr B Suresh said that the PCI has issued notices to several pharmacy colleges in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan and has asked them to reply within one week before taking strict action against them. In the surprise inspections carried out by the PCI, it was found that these institutions are being run without proper faculty. Though these institutions have built the required building structures and deployed the required equipment, in the absence of faculty all these will remain show piece only, Dr Suresh said.
He said the PCI is waiting for the reply from these institutions before initiating action against these erring institutions for violating rules to run these institutions. The PCI has given them to explain one week's time after that the PCI will take action against them.
As part of its efforts to identify and clamp down on the pharmacy colleges which are hoodwinking the authorities by reportedly running without proper faculties, the PCI had recently started surprise inspections on the pharmacy colleges to verify the real picture in this regard. In the first phase, the surprise inspections were carried out in three states of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh. "In Andhra Pradesh, things are more or less ok, but there are serious violations, mostly severe shortage of faculty, in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh," Dr Suresh said.
The PCI chairman squarely blamed the AICTE for this mess as he said that the AICTE gives indiscriminate permission to start pharmacy colleges across the country without seriously verifying the availability of infrastructure, especially the faculty. He said that the main reason for this kind of practices by the educational institutions is the dual powers for regulating the pharma education in the country. At present, the pharmacy education is regulated by both the AICTE and the Pharmacy Council of India (PCI), a statutory body exclusively constituted for the pharmacy education in the country.
