MUMBAI:

Less than three years after he began working as a research scientist in a US university , a Indian doctor was forced to return home and find himself jobless, thanks to the Centre’s refusal to issue him a no-obligation to return to India (NORI) certificate, following its change in guidelines. Dr Sunil Noothi has moved the Bombay high court to challenge the health ministry ’s decision. This could be the first case in the Bombay high court of an Indian medical graduate who is not practicing medicine in the US, but still denied clearance to stay there on a non-immigrant visa to complete his research project.The bench on Thursday said it will hear the matter, but Noothi’s lawyer Rahul Totala moved a separate plea to tag his matter with another NORI case pending before the Aurangabad bench. Dr Sagar Mundada, president of the Central Maharashtra Association of Resident Doctors, had moved the Aurangabad bench in April to challenge the anti-NORI policy introduced in 2014 as “retrograde” as it would affect over 4,000 doctors living in the US after completing their higher medical studies there.Noothi, a biomedical researcher with the University of Kentucky ’s department of microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics since August 2013, returned to India on December 28, 2015, as the US Department of Homeland Security required a NORI certificate. While the Karnataka government and the Mumbai Regional Passport Office issued him NOCs, the Union human resource and health ministry departments rejected his plea, as did the Prime Minister’s Office in June. The health ministry said no NORI certificate was being issued since August 2011, except to applicants aged 65 and above to tackle “the severe shortage of public health professionals in India”.Noothi’s petition claimed that the Centre’s decision lacks any application of mind. He clarified that he does not practice medicine, despite holding a MBBS degree from a Bangalore college since 2002. After getting a PhD from Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in 2008 and working as an analyst, he went to the US on a J1 visa in 2011. Since 2013, he was in Kentucky as a post-doctoral scholar and the US government has already funded over $1.5 million on his project to find a new cure for blood cancer As he had a J1 visa for only five years, he applied for NORI last February. The HRD ministry forwarded his plea, along with five others, to the health ministry as he had a MBBS degree prior to his PhD. The health ministry didn’t respond, and last December, he had to return to India. In March 2016, the health ministry informed him of its refusal. A letter of recommendation from the President of the Indian Medical Association to the health ministry saying that he was fit to be a scientist did not help.Last month, he met Union minister Venkaiah Naidu and other MPs only to receive another letter from the health ministry on May 23, saying that NORI is only being issued to senior citizens. He then registered his grievance online with the PMO and was shocked to be told, on June 2, that his case was “closed”.He argued that when he went to the US, NORI certificates were being issued, hence, the guidelines subsequently framed cannot be applied to him. He said his case is distinct as he was a researcher, not a doctor in the US and merely having a MBBS degree cannot be used to deprive him his job, in violation of his right to trade and right to life. Other researchers without MBBS degrees are being issued NORI, his writ said.Dr Noothi said he is “under a confidentiality and intellectual property protection agreement and cannot undertake the same research elsewhere”, hence is “now unemployed in India”. He was working on “blood cancer of chronic lymphocytic leukemia at a level of complexity not found in Indian labs”. “If motivated people are not encouraged, when will Indians receive a Nobel prize in medicine?” he asked the high court.