The Union Health Ministry has initiated a review of the National Medical Commission’s (NMC) long-standing practice of rejecting patient appeals in cases of alleged medical negligence and professional misconduct. Over the past five years, since its inception in September 2020, the NMC’s Ethics and Medical Registration Board (EMRB) has dismissed hundreds of such appeals, without hearing a single case brought forward by patients or their families. According to Right to Information (RTI) disclosures, 162 appeals by patients were rejected by the EMRB until June this year.
The commission’s stance has been that Section 30(3) of the NMC Act, 2019, permits only medical professionals—not patients—to file appeals against decisions of State Medical Councils (SMCs). However, critics argue that the Act does not explicitly bar patients, and that the insertion of the word “only” in interpreting the…
