"You Make Them Work For 18 -19 hours..Don't Want To Pay?": Supreme Court On MBBS Interns
Today, while hearing a petition filed by the MBBS interns of 2022 of Army Medical Colleges, the Supreme Court directed the Army Medical College Sciences to pay stipend arrears, calculated at Rs. 25,000 per month, to the MBBS interns of 2022.
Justice Kumar asked the Army College: “You make them work for 18 hours, 19 hours, and you don’t want to pay them stipend?”
There was an order passed in September 2023 to pay a monthly stipend of Rs. 25,000 to medical students from the batches from October 2023.
At the outset, a bench comprising Justice Sudhanshu Dhulia and Aravind Kumar questioned Senior Advocate R Balasubramanian, for the Army College, why they failed to disburse the stipend even after three years had passed.
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Advocate Tanvi Dubey, for the petitioners, informed the Court that three subsequent batches have received a stipend of Rs. 25,000.
Another advocate appearing for petitioner Abhishek Yadav said, “They have already given their services in the mandatory internship program. This order says that the present batch commencing from today should get a stipend of Rs. 25,000. We are the ones that approached the Court. We have already interned and given our services and we have not been given any sought of arrears.
Balasubramanian responded that the College is run by a society and it’s not government-funded.
Justice Dhulia however said that since these students worked for the College, they must be paid the stipend.
The Court passed an order: “Advocate R Balasubramanian, who appears for Army Medical College Sciences has made a very fair statement that Army College will give the same stipdent of Rs. 25,000 to all the interns. A three-judge bench of this Court on the same matter had passed the following orders giving stipend to the interns who are similarly situated as the petitioners batch commencing from 1 October 2023, for whom a stipend of Rs. 25,000 was fixed”.
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“We are informed that this stipend has been given. As regarding previous batch, it was said as follows. We are of the opinion that the same benefit ought to be given to the previous batch as well. Since nothing has come from the Respondent as to the amount, consequently we direct that interns of 2022, who had done their internship with Army Medical College, that also be paid an amount of Rs. 25,000. Let the same be calculated and paid within eight weeks”, the court said.
