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Dr. Nigam Prakash Narain v. National Medical Commission & Ors.

Civil Appeal · 2026 INSC 453Decided 6 May 2026
C.A. No.-007056-007056 - 2026
Justice Dipankar Datta · Justice Satish Chandra Sharma

Background

Dr. Narain, a senior paediatrician, briefly held a faculty post at one medical college before rejoining his original college, Patna Medical College, on a contractual basis. When Patna Medical College was surprised-inspected by the Medical Council of India on 5 May 2015, a declaration form he had signed in advance (and left with the Principal) did not mention his earlier stint at the other college, even though he himself was abroad at a medical conference in Amsterdam on the inspection date. The Medical Council's Ethics Committee first cleared him of the original charge of appearing as faculty at two colleges in the same year, but was then pushed by the Executive Committee to find him guilty on a different ground, non-disclosure in the declaration form, and ordered his name removed from the Indian Medical Register for three months; the Patna High Court's Division Bench upheld that removal after a Single Judge had earlier set it aside.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court found a clear breach of natural justice: once Dr. Narain had successfully defended the original charge framed in the show-cause notice, the Ethics Committee, acting on the Executive Committee's prompting, punished him on a materially different, undisclosed charge without ever giving him a fresh notice or a chance to respond to it. Relying on its own precedent (Ravi Oraon v. State of Jharkhand), the Court held that a disciplinary body cannot convict on a charge that was never put to the person being disciplined. Even so, the Court noted Dr. Narain had not satisfactorily explained the mis-declaration itself, which he ultimately admitted, so some misconduct had occurred. Balancing the natural-justice flaw against the fact that nearly a decade had passed and Dr. Narain was now 76 years old, the Court used its Article 142 power to reduce the punishment from a three-month removal from the medical register to a censure/warning, rather than fully quashing the finding of misconduct.

Lesson Learnt

A disciplinary or professional body cannot penalise someone for a charge that was never formally put to them and answered, due process requires a fresh notice for any new allegation, but even where such a procedural flaw exists, courts may still moderate rather than wipe out the penalty if some wrongdoing is genuinely admitted.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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