A division bench, of acting Chief Justice Y.K. Sabharwal and Justice K.S. Gupta, restrained the Naturo-Electro homeopathy Medicos of India (NEHMI) from awarding degrees, diplomas and certificates for any course in the next six months. The bench said ``false and misleading'' claims were being made in the media by ``fictitious'' institutes.

Spelling out the guidelines, the court said minimum standards of education should be taken into consideration before students are admitted into the institutes and diploma and certificate-holders are allowed to use the prefix doctor.

The judgment follows a Public Interest petition filed by wing commander (retd) H.M. Sethi alleging that several ``fake'' institutes were granting degrees, diploma and certificates to thousands of students in electro-homeopathy across the country in violation of the Indian Medical Council Act, Homeopathic Central Council Act and Indian Medical Degrees' Act.

Sethi said the institutes claimed they were administering homeopathy medicines charged with ``electric current'' to enhance the potency of the medicine for quick effect. But the system is still in its developing stages and has not been recognised in India, he said.

Seeking to impose a ban on such institutes, the petitioner drew the court's attention to some of their numerous newspaper advertisements. These were intended to lure people and the institutes were thus playing with their lives, he alleged. The court asked both the Centre and the state governments to ensure that the institutes did not make ``misleading claims'' about its recognition from the Medical Council of India in any form of advertisement.

The court directed the authorities to make people aware of ``fake'' institutes through adequate media publicity. The bench also said the then health minister in 1993 had made a categorical statement in Parliament that the Government has not yet recognised this system of medicine.

Moreover, the Director of Medical Education of the Union Health Ministry in his affidavit had also stated that electro-homeopathy had not yet been recognised by the government, the court pointed out. The judgment clarified that the University Grants Commission (UGC) had told the court that the Bachelor of Electropathic Medicine and Surgery (BEMS) degree being given to students by some of the institutes was in contravention of the UGC Act.

Quoting different Acts recognising various systems of medicines extensively, the court said the institutes awarding BEMS degrees in electro-homeopathy did not fall under any category of the Act.