Make organ transplant easier or face contempt, Maharashtra government told

The Bombay high court on Wednesday warned the state government that it would initiate contempt of court proceedings if by January 17 it failed to  comply with its earlier order, asking it to make organ transplant procedure easier.

A division bench of justice SC Dharmadhikari and Revati Mohite Dhere, said: “We recently read about a Leader of the Opposition, who went to Sri Lanka for a kidney transplant as he was not comfortable with the prevailing state rules for organ transplant. If this is how bad the scene is, then imagine what a  common man goes through.”

The bench added, “The procedure needs to be simplified, look at how foreign countries do it and learn from them.” The court was surprised to know, the pace at which things moved in the government.

In June, the court had directed the state to make sure that all applications shall be decided expeditiously and no one shall be made to wait for six months. The powers to verify and approve applications would lie with the 67 state authorisation committees only. No hospital, which has an organ transplant facility, would be able to forward the application. The government pleader, SK Shinde, said, “A proposal to create a separate establishment for authorisation committees had also been finalised. It is pending with the finance department and would be cleared at the earliest.”

New posts of secretary, clerks and social service superintendents will have to be created for smoother functioning of the committees.