The elections of the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC) are nothing more than a sham to accommodate the ‘blue-eyed’, the Young Doctors Association (YDA) said on Tuesday.
Addressing a press conference, YDA office bearers Dr Talha Sherwani, Dr Aslam Rao, Dr Rana Sohail, Dr Zahid Wazir, Dr Khuda Bakhsh, and Dr Qazi Yasir said the PMDC had recently announced elections by giving advertisements in newspapers, while the reality was that there were no voter lists and everything was being done in total violation of the law.
“A Rs 100,000 nomination paper fee has been fixed to deprive young doctors from contesting the elections. Dr Asim Hussain, who is the owner of a private medical college in Karachi and the vice president of the council, is controlling all the workings of the executive committee and the council office. He is trying to hijack PMDC by rigging the forthcoming elections,” they said.
Dr Talha said Dr Asim Hussain do not actually teach at Ziauddin University and as membership of the council is the right of a teacher, Dr Asim is not eligible to be a member. “Dr Sher Shah Syed has already filed an application in this regard before the chief justice of Pakistan. The application also contains evidence of corruption by Dr Asim and the powerful executive committee of the PMDC,” he said.
They said pursuant to Section 35 of Medical and Dental Council (Amendments) Act 2012, the council had been dissolved and the executive committee, vice president and president were appointed to conduct the elections so that a new council could be formed. “They were to serve as an interim setup. However, on October 3, the executive committee, in sheer disregard for law, made another committee to conduct the elections and declared themselves as candidates, and are planning to rig the elections,” they said.
Dr Talha said Dr Asim and his group were forcing the PMDC president to resign so that they could conduct elections under their orders.
“The so-called chairman of the election committee can confirm that the president, vice president and members of the executive committee will be contesting the very election that they were supposed to administer,” he said.
“They said the PMDC had 70,000 members from Punjab and 300 members from Fata, and both had 2 seats in the executive council,” he said.
