Manpower shortage hits KMC vote counting

A doctor from Bangalore has written to the Medical Education Minister S A Ramdas on Wednesday evening stating that he had not received the ballot paper to vote for the Karnataka Medical Council elections.

City-based anesthetist Dr Sudhakar K emailed the minister his registration number and said that he had not received the ballot paper for KMC elections.  When asked Ramdas told Deccan Herald that he would go through the email and discuss the matter with department officials.

“I will take a decision on Friday afternoon,” he said. Deccan Herald had earlier quoted the minister saying that he would investigate and take necessary action against the irregularities in the Karnataka Medical Council even if one doctor gave a written complaint to him.

Results out
The winners of the four posts reserved under teaching category for the new Council were announced close to midnight on Tuesday.

Dr Gududur Ajaykumar and Dr H Veerabhadrappa of M R Medical College, Gulbarga, Dr Uma B R of Davangere Medical College, Davangere and Dr Prabhakara G N from Tumkur won the four posts, vied for 12 candidates. 

Meanwhile, the counting for non-teaching category is still underway.  The candidates were happy that at least there were four computers and eight people employed for the counting.

Invalid votes
Out of the 4,730 ballot papers received by Karnataka Medical Council registrar-cum-returning officer, 3,292 were valid. Interestingly, the Karnataka Medical Council registrar’s vote was considered invalid due to error in the registration number, informed a candidate.

Dr Veerabhandrappa, who is one of the senior members of Karnataka Medical Council, said that one of the tasks that the new Council will have to immediately address would be updating the addresses of doctors registered with Karnataka Medical Council.

More features
“Many doctors have given their addresses when they were still studying. So we need to rectify that. We also need to maintain the Karnataka Medical Council website properly and add many features that would benefit the public too,” he said.    

Karnataka Medical Council has been under intense criticism over the way it was handled the election process, which had taken place after a long time.