A woman who had studied in an English medium school till class X, obtained a MBBS degree from China and also had an IELTS (International English Language Testing System) score of 7.5 out of 9, cannot be prevented from practising medicine just because English was not a compulsory subject in her higher secondary curriculum in Sri Lanka, the Madras High Court has said.
Chief Justice Sanjay V. Gangapurwala and Justice D. Bharatha Chakravarthy allowed a writ appeal filed by Ouwshitha Surendran in 2022 and said: “The appellant has undergone her education in competent and proper institutions. She has completed her MBBS Course by proper 10 +2 + 5 years. Like any other student, she is also entitled to lead a professional life and career and her case deserves consideration empathetically.”
Authoring the verdict, Justice Chakravarthy said, “To make her sit at home, despite her qualification, would cause gravest prejudice to her.” The Bench pointed out that after completion of her Class X at a Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) school in Kodaikanal, the petitioner’s family had moved to Sri Lanka where she pursued her higher education.
Thereafter, she completed her MBBS degree from Sinchuan University in China, returned to India and married an Indian. When NMC refused to let her write the Foreign Medical Graduate Examination (FMGE), required to be undertaken for the purpose of practising medicine in India, she filed a writ petition before the High Court and obtained an interim order from a single judge to write the examination.
However, the results of her examination were ordered to be kept in a sealed cover. After the final hearing of the writ petition, the singel judge dismissed her case leading to the present appeal. During the course of hearing of the appeal, the Division Bench called for the sealed cover at the insistence of her Senior Counsel Srinath Sridevan and found that she had cleared the FMGE too.
Therefore, the judges directed NMC to declare the results of the screening examination and register her as a medical practitioner, if there were no other impediments.
