KUNAL SAHA Vs. PRINCIPAL SECRETARY, DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND FAMILY WELFARE, GOVERNMENT OF WEST BENGAL AND ANOTHER

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Both the petitions under Article 226 of the Constitution challenge the appointment of a senior doctor as a member of the West Bengal Clinical Establishment Regulatory Commission on the ground that he has been found to be negligent in the conduct of a particular case and adverse comments have been made against him in a judgment of the Supreme Court of India. The petitioners exhort that in view of Article 144 of the Constitution the appointment as a member be annulled.

(2.) The petitioner in person in WP 17057(W) of 2017 claims to be a "physician from Kolkata permanently settled in the USA for the past more than two decades " Such petitioner is not a citizen of India but is an overseas citizen of India within the meaning of that expression in the Citizenship Act, 1955. According to such petitioner, his wife took ill while on a social visit to India with the petitioner and died at the age of 36 "primarily due to the negligent therapy by" the second respondent to his petition. Such petitioner claims to have battled in courts across India before the Supreme Court apparently held the second respondent herein guilty of medical negligence and primarily responsible for the death of such petitioner's wife. Such petitioner mainly relies on the following observations made by the Supreme Court against the second respondent herein in a judgment rendered in 2013.

(3.) The petitioner in WP 217 of 2017 is a citizen of India and complains of the West Bengal Clinical Establishments (Registration, Regulation and Transparency) Act, 2017 being "silent with regard to the disqualification/removal of the members of the said Commission." Though the petitioner in such Original Side matter has not directly complained against the appointment of Dr Sukumar Mukerhjee as a member of the commission and has not even mentioned him by name or impleaded him, there is little doubt from paragraph 5 of the petition that it is such appointment which is the subject-matter of challenge.