Set up Professional Council for physiotherapists: Delhi HC tells Centre

Let an affidavit be filed by the Secretary, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare a week before the next date of hearing. List on April 12, 2023, said the court.

The Delhi HC direction came on January 24, 2023, while hearing a plea moved by several physiotherapists who are qualified physiotherapists with many years of experience, seeking direction to the Centre to take steps towards recognition of physiotherapy as a separate and independent profession and set up a separate regulatory body to govern them and to redraft the standards set for physiotherapy in view of the constitutional deficiencies as set out in this petition.

The physiotherapists work in a broad range of public and private practice settings providing client and/or population health interventions as well as management,educational, research and consultation services and the same has been now set out in the Physiotherapy Model Curriculum, March 2016.

The petitioners were represented by Samrat Nigam with Tanya Agarwal and Ajay Singh, Advocates.

The National Commission For Allied And Healthcare Professions Act, 2021 to the extent it includes physiotherapy professionals ought to be quashed and set aside as it is violative of Articles 14, 19(1)(g) and 21 of the Constitution of India, said the plea.

The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Health and Family Welfare in its thirty-first report on ‘The Paramedical and Physiotherapy Central Council Bill 2007’ clearly spelt out that there is a deliberate intention to make physiotherapists subservient to the medical profession, plea read.