New Delhi: The Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud Friday said the apex court is paying Rs 80,000 per month as stipend to the law clerks and suggested that Army College of Medical Sciences should at least Rs 1 Lakh as stipend to young doctors.
Advocate Charu Mathur, representing the petitioners, submitted before the bench led by CJI and comprising Justices J B Pardiwala and Manoj Misra that this a matter where medical students were not getting any stipend and the court had issued notice in the matter. The Chief Justice queried the counsel, representing the National Medical Commission, this Army College of Medical Sciences (ACMS) they do not pay any kind of stipend to the interns?
Senior advocate Colonel (retired) R Balasubramanium, appearing for the ACMS, said the colleges are run by the Army Welfare Education Society (AWES) on a no-profit basis with the intention of serving the children of armed personnel. “How can any college say we will not pay the intern”, the Chief Justice queried.
Balasubramanium said this institution is not run for profit. The Chief Justice said, “Can you say we are not run for profit, therefore 'safai karamcharis' must work for us for free….it is profit for you but livelihood for them, or it is charity for but livelihood for them. Can you say we will not pay our teachers?”
The Chief Justice further added, “You cannot extract work from young doctors….”. Balasubramanium said they are concerned with the young doctors and also with the financial health of the institution. “This is a self-sustaining institution….the corpus is concerned it is created out of fees collected from students and hostel facilities are heavily subsidized,” he said.
The bench said it understands that the institution is run by AWES and asked how much are you paying interns now, you pay nothing at all? The bench queried NMC counsel, is there no regulation that the interns have to be paid? The counsel said we do not have financial control of medical colleges and we have prescribed that they will give stipend, no amount is fixed. The bench queried what is the stipend paid in other government institutes and wondered how students are not paid?
The Chief Justice said, “They do five years of medicine, all students do not have parental resources…..we will pass an interim order that from the month of October you must start paying stipend. Pay say at least Rs 1 Lakh a month to the students, we pay our law clerks Rs 80,000 a month”. Balasubramanium said Rs 22,000 government colleges pay and they would have to look into the financial health of the institution.
The Chief Justice said, “Will you tell your officer, you serve the nation but we will not pay you your salary….”.
After a detailed hearing in the matter, the apex court directed the NMC to respond to the plea complaining that several medical colleges do not pay any stipend or are not paying the minimum set stipend to doctors who are doing MBBS internships.
The top court directed the NMC to file a tabulated chart explaining whether the complaint regarding lack of stipend for medical interns is true, and what steps the NMC is taking to ensure compliance with the norm of paying internship stipend.
During the hearing, the apex court compared the stipend paid in other government colleges and asked the petitioners how much they are expecting. Mathur replied Rs.25,000 a month.
The bench directed the ACMS to start paying Rs 25,000 per month as stipend to the medical interns. The bench noted that the college is being run as a welfare measure for Army children and is not strictly commercial and gave it liberty to approach the fee regulatory committee in Delhi with a statement of likely financial impact of the court directions, and the committee would examine whether enhancement of fee is necessary.
The petition was filed by doctors, who completed their MBBS from ACMS, affiliated to the Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University (IP University), after clearing NEET UG examination.
“The other medical colleges affiliated to the IP University are Vardhaman Mahavir Medical College, Baba Sahib Ambedkar Medical College & Hospital and NDMC Medical College. It is most humbly submitted that the petitioners have to undergo a compulsory one year internship in the Army base hospital, after completion of their MBBS. The petitioners are thoroughly aggrieved by the arbitrary act on part of the respondents of not providing them with a monthly stipend during the period of their one year internship”, said the plea.
