The Supreme Court backed the Uttar Pradesh government’s right to deny voluntary retirement to government doctors, saying that allowing all doctors to leave service would lead to a collapse of the healthcare system for the poor.A bench led by justice Arun Mishra said the right of life of the poor would prevail over the right of employees to take voluntary retirement. The Allahabad High Court had on November 29, 2017, ruled against the state government’s right to deny any employee the opportunity to take VRS.Under state government rules, all employees have the right to apply for voluntary retirement after serving a three-month notice. But following a spate of resignations, the UP government withheld permission to four senior doctors to retire. The doctors moved the high court, which ruled in their favour.The pathetic state of health services in UP had come to light after hundreds of children died in a Gorakhpur hospital allegedly due to oxygen deprivation. The state government had gone after the hospital administration over the lapse.The high court said it was the responsibility of the authorities to monitor the health system and they have to sincerely examine how government hospitals can be improved on and why doctors were opting for voluntary retirement every day. The high court also observed that the doctors were not interested in joining government service.UP had just one doctor for 2,000 people, far less than ideal ratio prescribed by the Medical Council of India , it said. Even those few specialised doctors were being assigned administrative tasks instead allowing them to practice their specialisation.The high court said hospitals should be made excellent centres of health care and doctors must be provided adequate opportunities so as to retain them in services. The SC, however, accepted the state’s appeal against the high court order. “There is already a paucity of the doctors… the system cannot be left without competent senior persons… particularly… (when) doctors are not being attracted to join services and there is an existing scarcity of doctors.”Poorest of the poor obtain treatment at government hospitals. They cannot be put at the peril, it said. Somebody also has to man administrative posts for the running the medical services. “In the instant case, where the right of the public is involved in obtaining treatment, the state government has taken a decision as per explanations to decline the prayer for voluntary retirement considering the public interest,” the top court said.“It cannot be said that state has committed any illegality or its decision suffers from any vice of arbitrariness.” The decision of the government caters to the needs of the human life and carry the objectives of public interest, the top court said.In other states too, when a doctor is transferred from one place to another, the doctor resigns or seeks voluntary retirement as he does not want to move out and leave his lucrative private practice and joins the duty only when he obtains posting to the place of his choice, the top court said.