Supreme Court directs medical colleges to pay foreign medical graduates stipend at par with Indian graduates

The Supreme Court recently held that foreign medical graduates who completed their medical internship in India must be paid stipend at par with Indian medical graduates [Shashank Shekhar Pandey & Ors. vs. State of Jharkhand & Ors.].

A Bench of Justices Aravind Kumar and PB Varale held that Indian citizens holding foreign medical degrees cannot be discriminated against merely because they studied medicine abroad.

Therefore, the Court directed the concerned medical colleges to pay the difference in stipend to such foreign medical graduates at par with Indian medical graduates for the period of their internship.

The same has to be done within three weeks.

The Court was hearing a plea filed by Indian citizens who had obtained their medical degrees from universities in countries like Kazakhstan, the Philippines, Russia and China.

After returning to India, they completed the mandatory internship required to practise medicine. However, unlike junior batches of students who later received stipends following court directions, the petitioners were either paid less or not paid at all.

The dispute had its roots in an earlier case decided in July 2025. In that case, another batch of foreign medical graduates had approached the Supreme Court seeking stipend during internship.

The Court had allowed their plea and directed that stipends be paid within two weeks. Importantly, the Court had also clarified that colleges would not face any adverse action from the University Grants Commission (UGC) even if the payment was made without prior approval.

When the present petition came up for hearing, the bench noted that the petitioners stood on the same footing as those students who had already been granted relief earlier.

The Court observed that the only reason cited by the respondent colleges for delaying payment was the fear of objections from the UGC.

The Court explained that this concern had already been addressed in the earlier order and needed to be reiterated to avoid discrimination. It made clear that once the Court itself directs payment, regulatory authorities cannot penalise colleges for complying with the order.

The bench said that students who completed their internships earlier could not be treated differently from those who completed them later and had already been paid.

The judges also took note of the fact that the colleges were not seriously disputing the students’ entitlement to the stipend. The main hesitation was regulatory, not substantive.

Reiterating its earlier assurance, the Court clarified that no adverse action should be taken by the UGC against colleges merely because they paid stipends without prior permission, since the payment was being made under judicial orders.

The Court ultimately disposed of the petition with a direction to the concerned medical colleges to disburse the balance stipend to the petitioners within three months.

The petitioners were represented by advocate Charu Mathur.

The respondents were represented by Additional Solicitor General Aishwarya Bhati along with TVS Raghavendra Sreyas, Kumar Anurag Singh, Tulika Mukherjee, Beenu Sharma, Venkat Narayan, Shashank Bajpai, Shivika Mehra, Gopi Chand, Raj Bahadur Yadav, Tarkeshwar Nath, Harshit Singh, Anant Dev, Rameshwar Prasad Goyal, Parmanand Gaur, Megha Gaur and Vibhav Mishra.

[Read Order]