NEW DELHI: A parliamentary committee said it was “surprised” to find that crucial regulations issued by the National Medical Commission were not scrutinized by the Union law ministry, a prerequisite to prevent any future infirmities.
In its report on the “shortcomings of the regulations made under the National Medical Commission Act”, the Lok Sabha Committee on Subsidiary Legislation said that getting the draft rules and regulations scrutinized by the law ministry from the legal, constitutional and drafting point of view is essential.
“The committee, while examining the regulations published by the National Medical Commission under the auspices of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, found to its astonishment that one of the most integral procedures in framing any subordinate legislation, namely, getting ‘scrutiny’ by the Ministry of Law and Justice from the constitutional, statutory and drafting point of view, had been overlooked,” it said.
The report was presented in the recently concluded budget session in Parliament.
The committee’s report is based on an examination of the 2023 National Medical Commission Regulations; Teacher Eligibility Qualifications in Medical Institutions Regulations, 2022; The Medical Institutions Regulations for the year 2025, drafted by the National Medical Council.
The parliamentary committee said it was “surprised to find such events” without the Ministry of Law being aware of them.
The report noted that getting the bills, laws, rules and regulations “duly vetted” by the Ministry of Law is a “non-negotiable step” and should not be “missed” as it was “explicitly accepted” by representatives of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare as well during the filing before the committee.
Rules, regulations and orders issued under a particular law are called secondary legislation.
Also called delegated legislation, Parliament allows the executive to set rules for the proper functioning and implementation of the laws it has passed.
“The nature of such delegated legislation, which is published in the Indian Gazette, has to be taken seriously. Such delegated legislation, once it comes into the public domain, forms the fulcrum for subsequent executive actions by the nodal agency and, as such, deserves utmost caution and due diligence to weed out any iota of error which could have serious legal repercussions due to loopholes/weaknesses in the document,” the committee warned.
The committee took such cases into consideration and recommended that the Ministry of Health be “vigilant” and ensure that such mistakes are not repeated in the future.
It also said that all subordinate legislation drafted should be duly vetted by the Ministry of Law before being published in the Gazette of India.
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