Supreme Court Dismisses Plea Seeking Inclusion Of “Health” In Central List

The Supreme Court today dismissed the plea seeking inclusion of “Health” as a subject in the Centre List which enables the centre to legislate on the subject and exclusion of the same from the State List (item 6 List II as “Public health and sanitation; hospitals and dispensaries.”)

Bench of Justice LN Rao and Justice Hemant Gupta while dismissing the plea said, “We have many judgements saying that we can't direct legislature to make a law”

The plea was preferred by former District Judge Sujata Kohli in which Kohli had contended that, “the shortsightedness of the Governments had made the petitioner deeply concerned for all of us citizens of india to file this petition and to seek immediate constitution of a National Health Commission, to work on all the fronts, not just this emergency period but for all the times to come in the future and in the years and decades to come”.

The petitioner’s counsel argued, “I will not refer to the data and trauma that people went through. This was like a wild fire across the country and national and state leaders were searching for fire extinguishers to douse the flame”

She further submitted that the manner in which the states had mishandled health is such that it should be exclusively handed over to the Central List.

To this the court said, “Can we pass such orders? You can give recommendations, if there is substance in this plea”

The Court thereafter while dismissing the plea said, “The law is in abundance, but we are not inclined”.

Case Title: Sujata Kohli v. Union of India | W.P.(C) No. 587/2021