NGOs, med council laud court order on PCPNDT Act

NGOs, med council laud court order on PCPNDT Act

The Maharashtra Medical Council and NGOs working on the Save Girl Child campaigns have welcomed the Bombay high court order endorsing the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (PCPNDT) Act and asking the council to take immediate action against those convicted under the Act. “The high court order that was passed on October 22 will now speed up action taken against PCPNDT offenders. This is the first time that court has endorsed the Act,” said Dr Shivkumar Utture, executive member of the Maharashtra Medical Council (MMC). “Under the PCPNDT Act, once charges are framed against a doctor, we are supposed to suspend him/her from the registry for five years with immediate effect. But, under the MMC Act, we have to give the doctor a chance to reply before suspending him/her. We used to send show-cause notices to the errant doctors, but they would go to court and get a stay, which delayed action. Now, the court order will help us take quick action,” Dr Utture added. Till date, the council has sent show-cause notices to 32 doctors in the state and suspended the registrations of five others for violations under the PCPNDT Act. Dr AL Sarda, director of Population First, an NGO working on gender issues, said: “We welcome the court order and hope this will be a deterrent to many. Earlier the doctors approached court against the show-cause notice issued by the MMC and would get a stay. As the court case went on for long, they freely practised. This order will ensure that the black sheep in this noble profession get punished at the earliest.” The dipping child sex ratio in the state has been a concern for authorities for some time now. Like the rest of the state, Mumbai, too, has been seeing a fall in the child sex ratio. The provisional figures available with the civic officials for 2011 reveal that there are only 917 girls per 1,000 boys. The child sex ratio of the city for 2010, was 919 girls per 1,000 boys.