The Bombay High Court has reserved its verdict on a petition challenging Maharashtra’s decision to allow homeopathy doctors who complete the Certificate Course in Modern Pharmacology (CCMP) to provide allopathic medical services in the state.
A bench of Justices Riyaz Chagla and Farhan Dubash reserved its decision after hearing arguments in the petition filed by the Indian Medical Association (IMA). The court recorded during Thursday’s hearing that arguments from all sides had been completed.
The challenge concerns amendments made in 2014 to the Maharashtra Medical Council Act and the Maharashtra Medical Practitioners Act. The amendments enabled the introduction of the CCMP course and permitted homeopathy doctors who complete the course to practise modern medicine within the scope allowed by the state’s legal framework.
The IMA has primarily questioned the state’s legislative authority to introduce these provisions. The association has opposed the permission granted to CCMP-qualified homeopathy doctors to provide allopathic services, bringing the dispute before the High Court.
Representing the Maharashtra government, Advocate General Milind Sathe argued that the IMA is a voluntary association of doctors and had failed to establish the specific legal injury it had suffered because of the amendments. The government also argued that an organisation cannot challenge the constitutional validity of a law merely because it disagrees with the law’s provisions.
According to the government’s submissions, the petition was not based on an alleged violation of allopathic doctors’ fundamental right to practise a profession under Article 19(1)(g) of the Constitution. The Advocate General argued that the IMA had instead focused primarily on whether the state had the legislative competence to enact the amendments.
The government also placed before the court the question of whether the amended provisions had affected the services provided by allopathic doctors. Its submissions distinguished between a disagreement with the regulatory framework and a direct legal infringement of the professional rights protected under the Constitution.
The case therefore concerns both the scope of the state’s power to regulate medical practice and the legal basis for permitting practitioners trained in one system of medicine to provide services associated with another. The court’s ruling will determine the immediate legal status of the challenged provisions, although no decision has been announced yet.
The High Court has not specified in the report when the verdict will be pronounced. Until the reserved judgment is delivered, the court’s final position on the validity of the 2014 amendments and the CCMP-linked permission remains pending.
