The Supreme Court asked the Union government and all state governments to respond to a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) that seeks to declare cancer a notifiable disease across India to ensure uniform reporting, early diagnosis and better patient care.
A Bench comprising Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justices Joymala Bagchi and Vipul M. Pancholi heard submissions by advocate Gaurav Kumar Bansal, appearing for petitioner Dr Anurag Srivastava, former Head of the Department of Surgical Disciplines at AIIMS, New Delhi.
The petition urges the court to issue a writ of mandamus directing the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare to notify cancer as a notifiable disease nationwide. It argues that the failure to do so, despite the rapidly increasing cancer burden, amounts to a violation of Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution, as it results in unequal treatment of patients and undermines the fundamental right to health and life with dignity.
Apart from the Centre and the states, the petition has also named the National Institute of Cancer Prevention and Research as a respondent.
According to the plea, the lack of mandatory cancer reporting has led to fragmented data, weak surveillance and a policy vacuum in addressing India’s growing cancer crisis. It seeks directions for the creation of a unified, real-time digital cancer registry on the lines of the CoWIN platform used during the Covid-19 pandemic.
While health is largely a state subject, the petition points out that both the Centre and states have concurrent powers to notify diseases. This has resulted in an uneven legal framework, with some states declaring cancer notifiable and others not, leading to wide inconsistencies in reporting and early detection.
The petition highlights that non-uniform notification has caused serious gaps in cancer surveillance, delayed diagnosis, higher treatment costs and poorer outcomes. In many states, patients are reportedly diagnosed only at advanced stages, when curative treatment becomes difficult, costly or impossible.
It also draws attention to shortcomings in the National Cancer Registry Programme (NCRP) run by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), noting that it covers only about 10% of the population, with rural coverage as low as 1%.
The plea further flags the spread of unscientific and unverified alternative cancer treatments, citing claims such as the use of gomutra (cow urine) as a cure. Referring to an RTI response from the Rashtriya Ayurveda Sansthan, it states that no scientific evidence supports such claims, yet patients continue to be misled, resulting in delayed treatment and avoidable deaths.
In this context, the petition calls for a clear government policy distinguishing evidence-based therapies from untested claims, and ensuring that only scientifically validated treatments whether modern or traditional are practised or promoted.
The PIL seeks directions for immediate, coordinated and legally enforceable measures to strengthen India’s national cancer response. These include establishing a centralised, real-time digital cancer registry integrated with the NCRP, hospital records, state insurance databases and mortality data, as well as implementing nationwide cancer screening programmes.
