Aishwarya Rathore-
Supreme Court declined to intervene in a Bombay High Court ruling quashing Maharashtra government notifications regulating the rates charged to non-Covid patients by private hospitals and nursing homes.
A Bench of Justices D.Y. Chandrachud and M.R. Shah said, “It is not going to interfere with the high court order as the State government cannot issue such notifications.”
The Bench stated, “Non-Covid patients are bound to move to private hospitals when you don’t have the necessary infrastructure. Sorry, we will not interfere.”
On October 23, 2020, the Nagpur Bench of the Bombay High Court had said “The Maharashtra government does not have powers to frame any law or issue any notification regulating the rates chargeable by private hospitals and nursing homes to non-Covid patients.”
According to the notification, private hospitals and nursing homes must reserve 80 per cent of their beds for COVID-19 patients, with the remaining 20 per cent available for non-Covid patients.
The court also ruled that, “The Epidemic Diseases Act, Disaster Management Act, and Covid Regulations do not give the state government the authority to issue orders in cases involving non-Covid patients treated in private hospitals and nursing homes.”
The high court passed the order on petitions filed by the Hospitals’ Association of Nagpur and one Dr Pradeep Arora against the notifications.
The petition had said the fundamental right to practice any profession under Article 19(1)(g) of the Constitution includes the right to charge rates reasonable and proportionate to the nature and quality of medical treatment and allied services rendered to non-Covid patients. The rates prescribed by the State government are unreasonably low and to insist upon providing treatment and services to non-Covid patients at such rates cannot be justified.
The petitions were challenged by the state government, which claimed that the country was in the midst of a medical emergency owing to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The High Court had held the government’s notifications were “Clearly an encroachment over the fundamental rights of the petitioner under Article 19(1)(g) of the Constitution of India to practise any profession”.
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