SOME OF INDIA’S most consequential health reforms have been led not by doctors, but by lawyers. When Novartis sought a patent over Glivec, the life-saving drug used to treat chronic myeloid leukaemia, it was lawyer Anand Grover, representing the Cancer Patients Aid Association, a Mumbai-based cancer advocacy NGO, who successfully challenged the patent before the Supreme Court. The judgment preserved India’s ability to manufacture affordable generic medicines, ensuring treatment remained available at a fraction of the patented price for millions of cancer patients in India and across the developing world.
Equally, many significant legal reforms have been driven by doctors. Following the death of his wife due to medical negligence, Dr. Kunal Saha spent nearly fifteen years litigating against the hospital and doctors responsible. His case culminated in the Supreme Court awarding the highest compensation in a medical negligence claim and fundamentally reshaped standards of accountability in Indian healthcare. Through People for Better Treatment, a Kolkata-based NGO working on medical accountability that he founded in 2001, he has since assisted hundreds of victims of medical malpractice.
These stories demonstrate that medicine and law are not competing disciplines but complementary ones. Yet a recent judgment of the Kerala High Court in T. M. Manju v. Bar Council of Kerala, delivered last month, moves in the opposite direction. It held that a registered homeopathic doctor must cancel her medical registration before enrolling as an advocate. At a time when healthcare is increasingly regulated by law and legal disputes increasingly depend upon scientific evidence, the question is whether India should be making it harder, or easier, for professionals to bridge the two fields.
Registration equal to practice?
In the case at hand, the appellant had already stopped practising medicine. She had surrendered her municipal licence to run her clinic and furnished a written undertaking to the Bar Council that she would not practise medicine after enrolling as an advocate. Her application was nevertheless rejected because she continued to retain her medical registration. The Kerala High Court concluded that the continued existence of medical registration meant she could not truthfully declare that she had ceased medical practice.
The Court observed that a professional cannot “share his allegiance with another profession,” warning that such divided loyalty could result in serving “two masters at the same time” and ultimately in “splitting the professional soul” between two professions. There is force in the proposition that law and medicine demand undivided commitment and that simultaneous practice may create ethical conflicts. But the difficulty lies in treating registration itself as proof of divided loyalty.
Retaining registration does not invariably mean that a doctor is also treating patients, earning professional income or holding herself out as being in active clinical practice. Registration is a legal recognition of qualification and competence. Doctors routinely keep their registration while working exclusively in research, academia, public health, hospital administration, pharmaceutical regulation, health policy or international organisations. Registration also enables them to teach in medical colleges, serve on statutory committees, undertake expert medico-legal work and participate in ethics committees. More than a licence to practise, registration is a formal recognition of specialised knowledge and professional competence.
This recognition is earned through enormous personal and public investment. Becoming a doctor requires five-and-a-half years of undergraduate medical education, a compulsory rotating internship and, another three years of postgraduate specialisation. Last year, while addressing the 21st convocation ceremony of King George’s Medical University in Lucknow, Union Health Minister J.P. Nadda claimed that the Government spends an estimated ₹30–35 lakh per student on an annual basis. Obtaining the same qualification in a private medical college can cost over ₹4.5 crore. The public also invests heavily in the admission process itself. The 381st Report of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education, Women, Children, Youth and Sports (2026) records that the National Testing Agency spent ₹3,064.77 crore conducting the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (‘NEET’) over the previous six years.
Against this backdrop, why should the State compel a professional to surrender statutory recognition of expertise that society has invested so heavily in creating merely because she wishes to pursue another profession?
The law envisages Lawyer-Doctor duo
Ironically, Indian law itself assumes a seamless partnership between doctors and lawyers. Rule 7(3) of the Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues Rules, 2014 mandates that every Authorisation Committee include a nominee of the Law Department. The Surrogacy (Regulation) Act, 2021 and the Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Act, 2021 establish statutory Boards and Appropriate Authorities when legal oversight forms part of reproductive healthcare. The Supreme Court’s decision in Common Cause v. Union of India (2018) embedded legal safeguards into end-of-life medical decision-making.
Every practising doctor navigates questions of informed consent, confidentiality, professional ethics and patients' rights. Further, legal obligations relating to maintenance of medical records, biomedical waste management, hospital licensing, clinical establishment standards, consumer protection, data protection and medical negligence are inextricably woven into routine medical practice.
Courts also increasingly depend upon medical expertise. Under Sections 184 and 196 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, registered medical practitioners examine victims of sexual offences, conduct post-mortem examinations and prepare medico-legal reports that frequently determine the outcome of criminal prosecutions. Medical boards determine disability under the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016, assess mental capacity under the Mental Healthcare Act, 2017, advise courts on eligibility for termination of pregnancy under the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, 1971, certify brain-stem death under the Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues Act, 1994 and routinely assist courts in disputes involving medical negligence and public health.
The next generation of legal disputes will only deepen this overlap. Artificial Intelligence in healthcare, genomic medicine, biotechnology, and reproductive technologies emergencies require professionals who understand both scientific evidence and legal regulation. A doctor trained in law can interpret medical evidence more accurately and identify negligence more effectively. Equally, legal training equips doctors to navigate constitutional rights, consumer law and healthcare regulation.
Regulate conflicts, not qualifications
The conflict of interest is a legitimate concern. A doctor simultaneously representing patients against the hospital where they actively practise may well create ethical concerns. But those concerns can be regulated, instead of divesting the doctor of their title and recognition.
The Bar Council of India Rules prohibit advocates from engaging in full-time salaried employment while practising law. They do not require professionals to surrender every qualification or statutory registration they possess. Chartered accountants continue to remain members of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India under the Chartered Accountants Act, 1949. Company secretaries remain governed by the Company Secretaries Act, 1980. Patent agents continue to remain registered under the Patents Act, 1970. Insolvency professionals retain registration under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016. Across these professions, the law regulates conflicting professional conduct rather than extinguishing professional status.
Medicine should be no different. If the concern is simultaneous practice, the solution could be requiring an undertaking that the individual would not practise medicine and law simultaneously, and enforcing that undertaking through disciplinary proceedings.
Build bridges, not barriers
Leading universities across the world such as Harvard, Stanford, Duke, Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania actively encourage integrated MD-JD programmes. They recognise that modern challenges cannot be solved through legal reasoning or medical expertise in isolation. India should move in the same direction. It needs lawyers who understand medicine and doctors who understand regulatory governance. As healthcare becomes increasingly legalised and law increasingly scientific, interdisciplinary expertise is no longer an academic luxury, it is a necessity.
Anand Grover changed healthcare through the law. Kunal Saha changed the law through medicine. Their stories remind us that the black coat and the white coat are complimentary identities, and not competing ones. India should be building more bridges between the courtroom and the clinic, not insisting that anyone who crosses from one must permanently burn the other behind.
Disclosure: Anand Grover, a Senior Advocate practising at the Supreme Court of India, is also the co-founder of The Leaflet.
