Cuttack, Aug. 28: A public interest litigation filed in Orissa High Court has sought enactment of a specific law in the state for voluntary body donation for the purpose of medical education and research.

Approving the PIL, the high court has asked the petitioner to submit a representation to the state government to formulate a guideline to facilitate voluntary body donation. The court expected the state government to act on the plea “as expeditiously as possible”.

Secretary of Odisha Rationalist Society Purusottam Sutar filed the litigation seeking direction to the state government to legalise voluntary body donation as many people were lately coming forward for it.

Laws legalising voluntary body donation have been enacted in states such as Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Gujarat and Bengal, the petition contends.

The division bench of Chief Justice V. Gopala Gowda and Justice S.K. Mishra disposed of the PIL on Friday with the hope that the state government would take steps to address the issue put forth by the petitioner.

“The court directed the petitioner to file a representation before the secretary of parliamentary affairs in Odisha to place it before the concerned authority which will take necessary steps to frame the guidelines regarding voluntary body donation as expeditiously as possible,” petitioner counsel Khirod Rout told The Telegraph today.

“During the course of hearing, the director of state health services had informed the court that a proposal for amendment to the Odisha Anatomy Act, 1975, to include voluntary donation was pending with the government,” Rout said.

According to the petition, the Odisha Anatomy Act, 1975, the law governing supply of bodies for medical education and research in the state, still does not provide for voluntary body donations.

The act provides only for supply of unclaimed bodies to the medical colleges for education and research purposes. But, unclaimed bodies are mostly handed over to various non-governmental and social welfare organisations for cremation, instead of preserving them for medical and experimental purposes.

As a result, there is a scarcity of bodies, which poses problems for the students and teachers in various medical colleges of the state.

“The number of cadavers in stock in government medical colleges in the state is far below the Medical Council of India-stipulated student cadaver ratio of 10:1,” the PIL contends. The high court direction assumes significance as voluntary body donations could be the answer to the cadaver shortage for medical education in the state.

Reports indicated that around a hundred cadavers were required every year for educational purposes in the three government and private medical colleges in the state, of which less than 40 per cent was available at present.