Supreme Court upholds its decision that AYUSH doctors not entitled to same pay as MBBS doctors

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court has dismissed a batch of review petitions filed against its decision holding that AYUSH doctors possessing BAMS degrees are not entitled to equal pay as doctors holding MBBS degrees.

A bench of Justices Abhay S Oka and Pankaj Mithal declined to entertain the review pleas, saying that there is no error apparent on the face of the record, adding that even otherwise, there is no ground for review.

In its April 26 verdict, the top court had said that the emergency duty and trauma care that allopathy doctors are capable of providing, cannot be performed by ayurveda doctors. It had emphasised that while there is a need to promote alternative/indigenous systems of medicine, the court cannot be oblivious of the fact that both categories of doctors are certainly not performing equal work to be entitled to equal pay.

The decision had come on an appeal filed by the Gujarat government against an order of the state high court passed in January 2014 holding that AYUSH doctors should be treated at par with doctors holding MBBS degree.

In its impugned order, the Gujarat High Court had said that MBBS and non-MBBS doctors form part of the same cadre and hence no discrimination is permissible within the cadre on the basis of educational qualifications.

However, the Supreme Court had clarified that its judgment “shall not be understood to mean as though one system of medicine is superior to the other”.(IANS)

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