Delhi High Court upholds notice mandating allopathy doctors in Delhi to register with Delhi Medical Council

The Delhi High Court recently upheld a notice issued by the Delhi Medical Council (DMC) mandating that doctors who practice allopathy in the national capital must be registered with DMC [Dr Namit Gupta v Delhi Medical Council & Anr]..The DMC had also said that all the medical establishments must ensure the validity of the DMC registration of doctors before utilising their services and should also ensure that the registration is renewed every five years.A Division Bench of Acting Chief Justice Manmohan and Justice Manmeet Pritam Singh Arora upheld the DMC decision observing that the intent of making the medical practitioners amenable to the regulatory jurisdiction of the State medical council is in public interest.This enables the concerned medical council to hold erring medical practitioners accountable for their wrongful conduct and take disciplinary action against them, the Court said.“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. Regulation 9 of the Regulations of 2023 [Registration of Medical Practitioners and License to Practice Medicine Regulations, 2023], provides 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. There is no basis for alleging that the process of transfer and registration is inconvenient,” the Court held..It, therefore, rejected a public interest litigation (PIL) petition filed by Dr. Namit Gupta against the DMC notice.It was Dr. Gupta’s case that because of 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council which will lead to multiple State registrations..The Court held that Sections 15(2)(b) and 27 of the now repealed Indian Medical Council Act, 1956 (IMC Act) permitted a medical practitioner enrolled on a State medical register or the Indian Medical Register to practice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 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,” the High Court said. .Petitioner Dr Namit Gupta was represented by advocate MC Gupta. Advocate Praveen Khattar appeared for Delhi Medical Council. The National Medical Commission was represented by advocates T Singhdev, Aabhaas Sukhramani, Abhijit Chakravarty, Tanishq Srivastava, Bhanu Gulati, Anum Hussain and Ramanpreet Kaur. .[Read Judgment]