MP Haris Beeran urges govt to enact legislation on ensuring right to death with dignity

Haris Beeran demanded the government to mandate palliative care infrastructure at every district hospital and primary health centre.

Muslim League MP Haris Beeran on Monday asked the union government to urgently enact a legislation on ensuring right to death with dignity and mandate palliative care infrastructure at district hospitals and primary healthcare centres.

Raising the issue during Zero Hour in Rajya Sabha, he found fault with the Parliament for failing to act on the issue despite Supreme Court directives and Law Commission reports, as he referred to the latest case in which the Supreme Court allowed withdrawal of life-support system for a youth.

The family of Harish Rana, who had remained unconscious for 13 years after a fall from the fourth floor of a residential building, had approached the Supreme Court seeking permission for passive euthanasia in the absence of a law for the purpose.

Beeran, a lawyer-turned-MP, demanded the government should introduce the Medical Treatment of Terminally-ill Patients (End-of-Life Care) Act, as recommended by the Law Commission, and to mandate palliative care infrastructure at every district hospital and primary health centre.

He said the Bench of Justice Jamshed Pardiwala and Justice K V Viswanathan had tears in their eyes while delivering the judgment, as they told Rana's parents that they were not giving up on their son but allowing him to live with dignity.

Recalling that Article 21 of the Constitution mandates the Right to Live with Dignity and that has been stretched to the Right to Die with Dignity, he said, “how much more the Supreme Court can stretch is the question. My issue is that there is no legislation.”

He said the Law Commission’s 196th Report in 2006 had examined the issue of passive euthanasia in detail and appended a draft law but Parliament did not act. The same was the case with the 241st Law Commission Report in 2012.

Beeran also recalled that the Supreme Court intervened in 2011 in the Aruna Shanbaug case to frame guidelines. He said a Constitution bench in the Common Cause case in 2018 issued guidelines, noting they would operate only until Parliament enacted a law and these guidelines were modified in 2023. The latest judgment in 2026 has again expressed hope that Parliament will act, he said.

While flagging the financial burden on families with over 65 per cent of all healthcare expenditure in the country is paid entirely out of pocket, he also cited Kerala's community-based palliative care programme, operational since 2008, as a model for the rest of the country. The programme covers every gram panchayat in the state and integrates over 500 NGOs, he said.