The Supreme Court on Wednesday set aside a Gujarat High Court order which had held that Ayurveda practitioners working in government hospitals should be treated at par with allopathy doctors and entitled to equal pay.
The apex court held that Ayurveda doctors are not equal to MBBS doctors in terms of surgical procedures and hence, cannot be entitled to equal pay.
The court was hearing a batch of appeals challenging a 2012 Gujarat High Court order, which held that Ayurveda practitioners are entitled to be treated at par with doctors with MBBS degrees.
A Bench of Justices V. Ramasubramanian and Pankaj Mithal said that while it recognises the importance of Ayurveda practitioners and the need to promote alternative or indigenous systems of medicine, it could not be oblivious of the fact that both categories of doctors were certainly not performing equal work to be entitled to equal pay.
The bench said allopathy doctors were required to perform emergency duties and provide trauma care which wasn’t the case with Ayurveda doctors.
"Section 176 of CrPC [Code of Criminal Procedure] 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 [Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homeopathy] practitioners are normally notified as competent to perform post-mortem," said the bench.
The bench said, "By the very nature of the science that they practice 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 practitioners. It is also not possible for Ayurveda practitioners 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."
"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 authorise them to perform these surgeries. Similarly, a post-mortem or autopsy is not carried out by/in the presence of Ayurveda doctors", the bench added.