Supreme Court Keeps MMC Elections On

India’s Supreme Court refused Maharashtra’s last-minute bid to stop the April 26 election for the Maharashtra Medical Council, keeping the vote on schedule. (timesofindia.indiatimes.com) The state asked the court to cancel the poll after its cabinet moved on April 14 to replace elected seats with a nomination system under amendments to the Maharashtra Medical Council Act, 1965. The existing council structure has nine government nominees and nine doctor-elected representatives. (medicaldialogues.in) (timesofindia.indiatimes.com) The court had already ordered in January that the election be held within three months and said the process must restart from the beginning under a new returning officer, with voting fixed on a holiday. The April 26 date falls inside that deadline. (medicaldialogues.in) The Maharashtra Medical Council is the state body that registers doctors, renews licences, enforces professional ethics, and hears complaints against practitioners. Medical Dialogues reported that more than 200,000 registered doctors fall under its jurisdiction. (medicaldialogues.in 1) (medicaldialogues.in 2) The fight has been building for months because the council has not held elections since 2016 and has been run by a state-appointed administrator since 2022. That left Maharashtra’s main medical regulator without a freshly elected governing body for roughly four years. (medicaldialogues.in) The state says the new model would make the council more expert-driven. Under the proposal described in reports, the reworked body would include a president, four ex-officio government members, two registered medical practitioners, and six members chosen for experience in fields including medical education, public health, ethics, hospital administration, health policy, health economics, and law. (timesofindia.indiatimes.com) (medicaldialogues.in) Doctors’ groups have argued the change would hand the government tighter control over a statutory body that regulates the profession. Former Maharashtra Medical Council president Dr. Shiv Kumar Utture told Medical Dialogues that the timing was striking because the Supreme Court had ordered the long-delayed election only three months earlier. (medicaldialogues.in) The Times of India reported that some former council members now fear a second battle even after the vote: the government could delay nominating the remaining members needed to constitute the body. Medical education secretary Dheeraj Kumar was unavailable for comment, according to the paper. (timesofindia.indiatimes.com) For now, the immediate question is unchanged from the court’s January order: whether Maharashtra’s doctors cast ballots on April 26 after a decade of irregular elections and four years of rule by an administrator. (medicaldialogues.in 1) (medicaldialogues.in 2)