The Supreme Court on Tuesday decided to examine whether PhD was equivalent or inferior to a postgraduate degree as it stayed a Delhi High Court order that had set aside the appointment of Vaidya Yeshwant Deopujari as the chairperson of the National Commission for Indian System of Medicine (NCISM), holding him ineligible.

A bench of Justices Prashant Kumar Mishra and Manmohan sought the response of the NCISM and academics Ved Prakash Tyagi and Raghunandan Sharma, who had challenged the eligibility of Deopujari for the post.

“The operation and effect of the orders impugned passed by the high court shall remain stayed till the next date of listing,” the apex court said.

The high court bench of Chief Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya and Justice Tushar Rao Gedela had on June 6 upheld the contention of the petitioners that Deopujari could not be appointed as the chairperson of the commission as he did not hold a PG degree mandated under the NCISM Act.

The high court held that Deopujari possessed a PhD degree, whereas the requisite degree was MD or any other equivalent master’s degree in any discipline of the Indian System of Medicine.

“We have no hesitation to hold that the expression ‘Post-Graduate Degree’ occurring in Section 4(2) of the NCISM Act, 2020, in the context it has been used would mean a Master’s Degree (MD) in any discipline of Indian System of Medicine which the respondent does not possess and, therefore, he lacks the requisite qualification for being appointed to the office in question,” the high court had said.

The court had further said that a research scholar did not have to undergo any regular course. “For a PhD degree, no regular course of study is generally prescribed, nor does a candidate have to appear in any traditional examination in which minimum standards are fixed. The PhD degree is awarded to a scholar as a recognition of his research work on a particular topic”.