The Supreme Court on Monday refused to intervene in a Bombay High Court order against the Maharashtra government’s directive to regulate rates charged by private hospitals and nursing homes for patients diagnosed with diseases other than Covid-19, PTI reported.

A bench of Justices DY Chandrachud and MR Shah said that states do not have the power to issue such notifications. The judges observed that patients went to private hospitals due to a lack of infrastructure in government-run facilities.

“Non-Covid patients are bound to move to private hospitals when you don’t have the necessary infrastructure,” the bench said, according to PTI.

In October, the Nagpur Bench of the Bombay High Court had quashed the state government’s notification regulating the rates charged by private hospitals from non-Covid patients, according to Live Law. After this, the Maharashtra government had challenged the judgement in the Supreme Court.

The High Court ruling had made similar observations as the Supreme Court that the state government was not empowered under the Epidemic Diseases Act, Disaster Management Act and Covid-19 regulations, to take such decisions.

In April and May, 2020, the Maharashtra government had issued two notifications prescribing a rate card for private medical facilities. The notifications directed private hospitals and nursing homes to keep 80% of their beds reserved to treat Covid-19 patients, and the remaining 20% could be used to treat non-Covid patients, PTI reported.

The Hospitals’ Association of Nagpur and an individual medical practitioner, Pradeep Arora, had moved a petition against the notifications.

The petition submitted that the Article 19(1)(g) of the Constitution guarantees the fundamental right to practice any profession or to carry on any occupation, trade or business.

The rates prescribed by the state government are unreasonably low and to insist upon providing treatment and services to non-Covid patients at such rates cannot be justified, the petition also contended, according to PTI.

The High Court had agreed that the notification was an encroachment of the fundamental rights.