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The forum has requested medical professionals to be included in the exclusion list of services under the Consumer Protection Act
India
healthysoch.com
New Delhi, August 31, 2019:
The Padma Awardees Doctors’ Forum has appealed to the Hon’ble Prime Minister of India to requesting medical professionals to be included in the exclusion list of the services under Consumer Protection Act. The Consumer Protection Bill, 2019 was passed by both Houses of Parliament but the new act does not include services rendered by medical professionals. The terms “medical profession”, “healthcare”, “doctors”, etc. are not mentioned in the act.
Although the landmark precedents as laid down by the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India cover the medical profession/healthcare under the purview of Consumer Protection Act, the Legislature never intended to cover the services rendered by the medical professionals under the same. What is more is that medical professional services are not covered under GST.
Speaking about this, Dr KK Aggarwal, convener of the forum said, “The Consumer Protection Bill 2019 was passed, and it is disheartening to see a lack of clarity on aspects pertaining to the medical services as well as professionals. Earlier, when amendments to the Consumer Protection Act were introduced in 2015, there was no mention of ‘healthcare’ in the list of examples of as to what constitutes ‘service’. We thus appeal to the Hon’ble prime minister to shed some light on this aspect and consider our appeal of placing medical professionals in the exclusion list of services.”
While enacting both the Consumer Protection Act, 1986 and Consumer Protection Act, 2019, the draftsmen of the Legislature had specifically and intentionally not included the services rendered by medical professionals. In 2019, when the new bill was presented, the term ‘healthcare’ was included in the draft of the Consumer Protection Bill. However, the same was later removed.
The Consensus Statement has been signed by the following 37 members of the Padma Awardees Doctors’ Forum
Dr KK Aggarwal, Dr P Venugopal, Dr P Lal, Dr SC Manchanda, Lt General BN Sahi, Dr KK Talwar, Dr M Khalilullah, Dr Ashok Seth, Dr TS Kler, Dr Neelam Kler, Dr Mahesh Verma, Dr Arvind Lal, Dr Madan Mohan, Dr Harsh Mahajan, Dr Anoop Misra, Dr Kalyan Banerjee, Dr NP Gupta, Dr Yash Gulati, Dr AK Grover, Dr KK Sethi, Dr GK Khatri, Dr Nikhil Tandon, Dr Saumitra Rawat, Dr NK Pandey, Dr NM Shroff, Dr Raman Kapoor, Dr Ganesh Mani, Dr AK Bhalla, Dr Nitish Naik, Dr M Wali, Dr Randhir Sud, Dr RK Grover, Dr Malvika Sabharwal, Dr D S Gambhir, Dr A S Soin, Dr Sanjeev Bagai, Dr Upendra Kaul.
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