New Delhi, April 27 (). The Supreme Court on Wednesday set aside a Gujarat High Court order that said Ayurveda doctors working in government hospitals should be treated at par with doctors holding MBBS degrees and entitled to equal pay. .
A bench of Justices V. Ramasubramaniam and Pankaj Mithal observed: While recognizing the importance of Ayurveda doctors and the need to promote alternative/indigenous systems of medicine, we cannot be oblivious to the fact that both categories of doctors are certainly performing equally. Not doing Work to be entitled to equal pay.
The bench noted that it is common knowledge that during Out Patient Days (OPD) in general hospitals in cities/towns, MBBS doctors have to attend to hundreds of patients, which is not the case with Ayurveda doctors.
The apex court’s verdict came on a batch of appeals challenging a 2012 Gujarat High Court order which held that Ayurveda doctors are entitled to be treated at par with doctors with MBBS degree.
The bench said: Due to the nature of the science they practice and with the advancement of science and modern medical technology, Ayurveda doctors cannot perform the emergency duties that allopathy doctors perform.
It is also not possible for Ayurvedic doctors to assist surgeons performing complex surgeries, whereas MBBS doctors can assist. We should not take this to mean that one system of medicine is better than another.
The bench said that it is neither within its mandate nor within its competence to assess the relative merits of these two systems of medical science and in fact, we are aware that the history of Ayurveda goes back several centuries.
We have no doubt that every alternative system of medicine can have its place in history. But today, practitioners of indigenous systems of medicine do not perform complex surgical operations. The study of Ayurveda does not authorize him to perform these surgeries.
SGK
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