Registered in another State? The council's previous permission is what Kerala's practitioner law insists on

Background

Nearly a hundred permanent posts for medical officers lie vacant across the government hospitals of Kasaragod, and the district unit of the Indian Medical Association and the District Development Committee have asked the State to let practitioners on the Karnataka Medical Council's register work there. Who may practise medicine in Kerala is settled by the Travancore-Cochin Medical Practitioners Act, 1953. Section 23 lists who is eligible for registration, beginning with every holder of a recognized qualification and every practitioner holding a Government appointment when the Act came into force. Section 24 asks for an application in Form II of the schedule with a fee of Rupees 20, and a fee of Rupees 5 where a registered practitioner adds a further recognized qualification. Once the appropriate council directs registration, the Registrar enters the name in the appropriate register and issues a certificate in the prescribed form. Sub-section (5) is the clause the Kasaragod demand runs into: a practitioner not registered under this Act, and outside the fee exemption, who is registered in any other State in India has to obtain the previous permission of the appropriate council before practising in the State, on payment of the prescribed fee. The exemption in sub-section (4) covers a person already on another State's register for modern, homoeopathic or indigenous medicine, where that State's own law registers practitioners registered under this Act without any fee or on a smaller fee. A Karnataka registration therefore does not by itself open practice in Kerala; the council's prior permission is the step the Act insists on.