Row rumbles on over suitability of top Indian doctor for WMA president.

A row has erupted among prominent Indian doctors about the suitability of Ketan Desai, a former president of the Medical Council of India, as president of theWorldMedical Association, a position he is due to take up in October 2016. The disagreement centres around charges brought against Desai in 2010 by India’s Central Bureau of Investigation, which accused him of having sought a bribe from a private medical college that was seeking approval from the council when he was president. Desai denies the charges. Desai was originally declared president elect of the WMA in 2009 and was due to take up the post in October 2010. But he failed to attend the association’s annual meeting and was not appointed. After Desai was arrested on the bribery charges in April 2010, the council was disbanded by the government before being reconstituted in November 2013. Meanwhile, Desai’s licence to practise medicine, which was suspended in 2010, was reinstated by the new Medical Council of India in 2013. Since 2013 several members of the IndianMedical Association, including its secretary general K K Aggarwal and Ajay Kumar, have been claiming that because a disproportionate assets case against Desai—filed at the same time as the bribery charges—was closed because of lack of evidence, the bribery case against Desai had automatically become baseless. “It can safely be stated that closure of the disproportionate assets case means that all corruption charges against a person are found to be false and baseless,” said Aggarwal in an email to The BMJ. Kumar, who finished his term as a member of the Medical Council of India’s ethics committee in January in a “routine reshuffle,” presented this argument to a meeting of the World Medical Association in 2013. Kumar said that “the charges facing Dr Ketan Desai had now been dropped and he should be allowed to be reinstalled as the WMA President,” the World Medical Journal reported. Shortly afterwards the association reinstalled Desai as president for 2016. However, Kunal Saha, a physician of Indian origin in the United States and founder president of People for Better Treatment, a voluntary organisation set up to expose medical malpractice and corruption in healthcare, complained to theMedical Council of India that Kumar’s assertion that the charges against Desai had been dropped was “absolutely false.” Harish Kumar Jethi, chief vigilance officer at the council, was charged with investigating the complaint. In his report, filed in October 2014, Saha said that “the Indian Court website shows that the case against Dr Desai is still pending at the Patiala District Court in New Delhi.” Documents seen by The BMJ have confirmed that the bribery charges are pending. In response, Kumar informed the council that Desai fulfilled all the conditions for election as president of the association. He said that a letter from the Central Bureau of Investigation dated October 2014 said that six out of eight cases against Desai had been dropped. “There are no charges against him in one case and the trial court proceedings have been stayed by the Honourable Supreme Court in another case,” he told the investigation. Jethi’s report concluded that Kumar’s statement to the World Medical Association about charges against Desai having been dropped was “unethical” and recommended that the matter be passed to the health ministry and that the association be informed that Desai is still on bail for charges of bribery. J Vinod Kumar, an officer at the Central Vigilance Commission, an independent organisation set up in 1964 to fight corruption, confirmed that Jethi’s report was currently being considered by the Indian health ministry. However, the Medical Council of India has so far failed to take any action and has not informed theWorldMedical Association as Jethi recommended. Responding to questions from The BMJ, Jayshreeben Mehta, president of the Medical Council of India, said the council had nothing to do with the functioning of the association. She said, “To the best of my knowledge WMA is a private association. Dr Desai has been elected as the president of WMA as a nominee of the Indian Medical Association. The MCI has nothing to do in this regard.” MukeshHaikerwal, chairman of theWorldMedical Association, told The BMJ that the pending cases against Desai did not affect the association’s decision to appoint him as president for 2016, as there have been no convictions to date. He said that he understood that Desai was at the Indian Medical Association congress in Ahmedabad in December with the union minister of health. “It is an indicator of the regard in which he is held. Until he is proven guilty he is entitled to the presumption of innocence,” he said.