“Allopathy doctors and Ayurved doctors are not entitled to equal pay,” says Supreme Court

On April 26, 2023, the Supreme Court of India was hearing the civil appeals arising from a common order passed by the Gujarat High Court Division bench at Ahmedabad. The order confirmed that the practitioner possessing a degree of Bachelor of Ayurved in Medicine and Surgery (BAMS) should be treated at par with the doctors holding MBBS degrees as well as entitled to the benefits of the recommendations of the Tikku Pay Commission. The bench hearing the case, Justice Pankaj Mithal and Justice V. Ramasubramanian, said thatSupreme Court of India was hearing the civil appeals arising from a common order passed by the Gujarat High Court Division bench at Ahmedabadthe emergency duty that Allopathy doctors are capable of performing and the trauma care that they are capable of providing, cannot be performed by Ayurved doctors.” 

During the hearing, the bench said, “We shall not be understood to mean as though one system of medicine is superior to the other. It is not our mandate nor within our competence to assess the relative merits of these two systems of medical sciences.” It further added that “Therefore, we have no doubt that every alternative system of medicine may have its pride of place in history. But today, the practitioners of indigenous systems of medicine do not perform complicated surgical operations. A study of Ayurved does not authorize them to perform these surgeries.” 

In this case, the top Court addressed two main questions, first one was “Whether different scales of pay can be fixed for officers appointed to the same cadre, on the basis of educational qualifications possessed by them?” While addressing this question the Apex Court said “.. it is open to the State to classify employees on the basis of qualifications, duties, and responsibilities of the posts concerned…” The bench also observed that classification on the basis of educational qualification was not violative of Article 14 and Article 16 of the Constitution of India. The other question was “Whether Allopathy doctors and doctors of indigenous medicine can be said to be performing ‘equal work’ so as to be entitled to ‘equal pay’?” In context with this question, the Supreme Court bench said that doctors of indigenous medicine and allopathy doctors were certainly not performing equal work and were not entitled to equal pay.

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