Login With Google
‘State can stop voluntary retirement of doctors’
Why it is in news?
- The State can stop government doctors from taking voluntary retirement in public interest, the Supreme Court has ruled.
- The fundamental right to retire is not above the right to save lives in a country where government hospitals cater to the poorest
- The concept of public interest can also be invoked by the government when voluntary retirement sought by an employee will be against public interest.
- The court said public health was suffering from a scarcity of doctors.
- Qualified doctors did not join the public service, and even if they did so, they chose voluntary retirement and went into lucrative private practice.
Interest of public
- It said the poor could not be put in peril by a paucity of specialists in government hospitals.
- The State governments had an obligation “to make an endeavour under Article 47 to look after the provisions for health and nutrition.”
- The doctors, as citizens, had certain fundamental duties under Article 51(A) towards their fellow citizens.
- The right to practise a profession under Article 19(1)(g) was subject to the interest of the general public.
- The High Court said the government healthcare sector needed senior doctors as they were “absolutely necessary to run the medical services which are part and parcel of the right to life itself.”
Source
The Hindu