At its meeting on 29th June, the Council accepted the nomination of Dr John Victor Peter (usually known as JV Peter) as the Director Designate, to take over from Dr Sunil Chandy on 23rd September 2017.
He is an alumnus of the MBBS Batch of 1982, and currently head of Medical ICU and Associate Director (Finance). Previously he did a great job heading up the Pharmacy Department (along with his responsibilities in Critical Care). He is a great musician, so let us all pray that his time conducting the CMC Orchestra will be one of melody, harmony, clear God-given direction and God-honouring progress.
Other brief News from the Council:

–  Excellent progress in both Kannigapurum and Chittoor new campuses. At Kannigapurum around 15% of the civil works are completed and they are looking towards completing construction by the end of 2018. After that it will take another 6 months or so to get all the internal fittings and equipment in place. All four operating theatres at Chittoor are now in use, and the growth there has necessitated plans for an expansion to the Outpatient Building. The number of services is steadily growing. The new director was asked to bring a long-term vision and strategic plan for Chittoor to the January meeting.
– Regarding MBBS and admissions to higher speciality post graduate courses we are still in limbo. The results for the undergraduate NEET (national entrance) exam were finally released in the second half of June (having previously been held up because of various complaints about the fairness and conduct of the exam). However, the Supreme Court will be reopening next week when it will address the issue of “Common Counselling” – which was ordered by the MCI, but is being strongly objected to by CMC and various other bodies. Common counselling (which might be either at a national government or state level) means that seats would be allocated to students purely according to their NEET marks and choice of medical college and the Colleges would not have any part in the selection process (although I think the Christian minority privilege would mean that at least 50% of our seats would still go to candidates from the Christian Community). CMC Administration is firmly opposed to this measure, since a) the concept of “sponsorship” from Christian bodies (and the commitment of students to return to work for their sponsoring body) would cease to exist, along (probably) with the geographical spread of our students from all over India, and b) academic achievement should not the only indicator of “merit” for selection for medical training – we have always used other determinants of aptitude and also tried to discern the student’s long -term commitment to service, rather than just a medical career. Dr Sunil feels that we should seriously consider not admitting students this year, if central counselling becomes inevitable. Meanwhile the admission timetable is still up in the air.
– Financially the income for the year increased strongly (despite the negative pressures from “demonetisation”, but expenditure increased at a higher rate, leading to less money available for allocations than hoped, and prompting a need for stronger financial control and planning – hopefully the new Director has the right background to enforce this.
– Dr. Regi Thomas (ENT) will take over from Dr Thomas Ram as Council Secretary later in the year.