Jaipur: The Supreme Court Thursday issued notices to 107 nursing colleges and the Indian Nursing Council (INC) while hearing a Special Leave Petition (SLP) filed by the state govt to regulate nursing colleges.
The state govt filed the SLP against the orders of a single bench and a division bench of the Rajasthan High Court that struck down the key conditions in the state’s nursing education policy.
As per the order uploaded Friday, the bench comprising Justice P S Narasimha and Justice Joymalya Bagchi heard the arguments and issued notices to the 107 nursing colleges in Rajasthan and to the INC.
Shiv Mangal Sharma, additional advocate general, appearing on behalf of the state govt, asserted that Rajasthan witnessed the unchecked rise of nursing colleges being operated from mere flats and buildings with no real infrastructure or commitment to quality education.
“In the larger public interest, a policy was introduced on June 7, 2022, mandating that any institution seeking to establish a nursing college must own and operate a 100-bedded hospital. This was kept as a minimum threshold to ensure the credibility and quality of nursing education,” he argued.
However, on Nov 4, 2022, a single bench struck down the state govt’s policy mandating that a nursing institution must have a 100-bedded hospital. “We challenged this in the division bench, which too, on March 1, 2024, dismissed our appeal. Thus, we approached the Supreme Court on April 12, 2024, and in its first hearing on Thursday, the Supreme Court issued notices,” Sharma said.
The state govt also contended that the high court failed to appreciate the distinction between “minimum standards” set by the INC and “additional safeguards” that a state govt can enforce based on local realities. “The mushrooming of substandard institutions directly threatens the public healthcare system by producing inadequately trained professionals,” Sharma argued in the court.
