The Delhi High Court has upheld a notice which was issued by Delhi Medical Council (DMC) making it compulsory for all the allopathy doctors in the national capital for gettig registered with DMC.
Delhi Medical Council has clarified that the validity of the DMC registration of doctors before utilising their services is ensured by all the medical establishments and the registration is renewed every five years.
Observing that the intent of making the medical practitioners amenable to the regulatory jurisdiction of the State medical council is in public interest, a division bench of acting Chief Justice Manmohan and Justice Manmeet Pritam Singh Arora upheld the decision by DMC.
The Court held that this would ensure and enable the medical council to hold erring medical practitioners accountable for their wrongful conduct and take disciplinary action against them.
The Court said that the contention of the Petitioner that it would be inconvenient for the medical practitioner to seek transfer to a new State Medical Council in case of a transfer of job, is without any basis.
The court said that under the Regulation 9 of the Regulations of 2023 [Registration of Medical Practitioners and License to Practice Medicine Regulations, 2023],there is a provision for a convenient web portal-based procedure for seeking transfer of registration to another State Medical Council and also provides for a mechanism of deemed approval.
The PIL filed by Dr. Namit against the DMC notice was rejected saying that there is no basis for alleging that the process of transfer and registration is inconvenient.
As per the DMC notice, individuals who are already registered with some other State’s medical council will have to either surrender the other State’s registration and get themselves registered with DMC or they will have to get themselves registered with both State’s medical council which will lead to multiple State registrations.
The Court held that Sections 15(2)(b) and 27 of the now repealed Indian Medical Council Act, 1956 (IMC Act) allowed medical practitioner enrolled on a State medical register or the Indian Medical Register to practice medicine in ‘any State’ or ‘any part of India’ but those expressions have been omitted in the corresponding provisions of Sections 33 and 34 of the newly introduced National Medical Commission Act, 2019 (NMC Act).
The High Court held that in the absence of the said expressions in the NMC Act evidences that the intent of the legislature is to restrict the medical practitioners from practicing in States or Union Territories where they are not registered. Similarly, by expressly enabling registrations with more than one State Medical Council under the Regulations of 2023, the legislative intent is clearly intended to restrict the practice of medical practitioners in the State(s) in which they are registered with the concerned State Medical Council,”