The Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that Ayurvedic doctors are not at par with MBBS doctors in terms of surgical procedures and therefore are not entitled to equal pay, setting aside a Gujarat High Court order that made pay and benefits equal for both.
A bench of Justices V Ramasubramanian and Pankaj Mittal also noted that allopathic doctors are obliged to perform emergency services and provide trauma treatment, but Ayurvedic doctors are not.
“Allopathic physicians are required to provide emergency response and trauma care. Due to the nature of the science they perform and advances in science and modern medical technology, the emergency response and trauma care that allopathic physicians can provide is not available to Ayurvedic physicians,” it reads.
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It further said, “An Ayurvedic doctor cannot assist a surgeon in performing complex surgeries, but an MBBS doctor can.”
Referring to outpatient clinics where doctors see hundreds of patients, the Supreme Court said, “it cannot ignore the fact that both categories of doctors are not performing comparable work to be entitled to equal pay.”
“There is no doubt that all alternative medical systems have had a proud place in history, but today indigenous medical system practitioners do not carry out complex surgical procedures,” the report said.
However, the Court also recognised how important it is to promote Indigenous health systems.
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