Ayurveda practitioners cannot be dealt with at par with docs holding MBBS ranges: SC  

The excessive court docket docket judgment received right here on a batch of appeals tough a 2012 Gujarat High Court order, which held that Ayurveda practitioners are entitled to be dealt with at par with docs with MBBS ranges.

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Wednesday put apart a Gujarat High Court order, holding that Ayurveda practitioners working in authorities hospitals must be dealt with at par with docs holding MBBS ranges and so they’re entitled to equal pay.

A bench of Justices V. Ramasubramanian and Pankaj Mithal said: “Even while recognising the importance of Ayurveda doctors and the need to promote alternative/indigenous systems of medicine, we cannot be oblivious of the fact that both categories of doctors are certainly not performing equal work to be entitled to equal pay.”

The bench said it is common data that in out-patient days (OPD) typically hospitals in cities/cities, MBBS docs are made to maintain a number of of victims, which is not the case with Ayurveda docs.

“Section 176 of Cr.P.C deals with inquiry by Magistrates into the cause of death. Sub-section (5) of Section 176 uses similar words namely civil surgeon or other qualified medical man. We do not think that the AYUSH doctors are normally notified as competent to perform post-mortem,” said the bench.

The excessive court docket docket judgment received right here on a batch of appeals tough a 2012 Gujarat High Court order, which held that Ayurveda practitioners are entitled to be dealt with at par with docs with MBBS ranges.

The bench said: “By the very nature of the science that they practise and with the advancement of science and modern medical technology, the emergency duty that allopathy doctors are capable of performing and the trauma care that they are capable of providing cannot be performed by Ayurveda doctors.”

“It is also not possible for Ayurveda doctors to assist surgeons performing complicated surgeries, while MBBS doctors can assist. We shall not be understood to mean as though one system of medicine is superior to the other.”

The bench said it is not its mandate nor inside its competence to guage the relative deserves of these two methods of medical sciences and as a matter of fact, “we are conscious that the history of Ayurveda dates back to several centuries”.

“We have no doubt that every alternative system of medicine may have its pride of place in history. But today, the practitioners of indigenous systems of medicine do not perform complicated surgical operations. A study of Ayurveda does not authorize them to perform these surgeries.”