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On 11 August 2026 the Supreme Court directed the 19 States and Union Territories that have not yet done so to consider declaring cancer a notifiable disease.
A bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant, Justice Joymalya Bagchi and Justice V. Mohana was hearing the PIL Anurag Srivastava v. Union of India, W.P.(C) No. 1211/2025.
The Court was told that 17 of the 36 States and UTs had already notified cancer, acting on the 139th Report of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Health and Family Welfare.
The States and UTs concerned must file compliance affidavits; the Bench also asked the Centre why it could not issue mandatory guidelines for all of them.
The Centre, through Additional Solicitor General Anil Kaushik, replied that health is a State subject.
A notifiable disease is one whose diagnosed cases a doctor, hospital or laboratory is legally obliged to report to a designated public-health authority. The obligation converts a scattered clinical record into a statutory data stream, which lets the state measure the true disease burden, spot geographic or occupational clusters early, allocate specialists, drugs and machines where cases actually are, and later test whether a programme worked. India has no single national list: because public health is primarily a State subject, each State and Union Territory decides what its doctors must report, which is why cancer is notifiable in some parts of the country and invisible to the statute book in others. Tuberculosis, cholera, malaria, dengue, measles, diphtheria, polio, rabies, typhoid and Japanese encephalitis are commonly notified. Cancer is unusual on such a list because it is non-communicable — notification here is not about containing contagion but about surveillance and early detection.
Simple Analogy: Voluntary reporting is a suggestion box: some hospitals drop a note in, most do not, and no one can tell what the whole building thinks. Notification is a compulsory register at the door — you may still dislike the count it produces, but you can trust it.
'Public health and sanitation; hospitals and dispensaries' is a State subject — the basis of the Centre's submission that it cannot simply mandate notification nationwide.
'Prevention of the extension from one State to another of infectious or contagious diseases' gives the Union a concurrent handle — but it is framed around communicable disease, which cancer is not.
The right to life, from which the Supreme Court has read out a right to health and to dignified living; the petition's principal constitutional peg.
Equality before the law — pleaded on the ground that patients in non-notifying States are worse placed than identically situated patients elsewhere.
The broad statutory framework for dealing with epidemic disease in India; it underpins much State notification practice but is built for outbreaks rather than chronic non-communicable illness.
Collects cancer incidence, mortality and survival data through Population Based Cancer Registries (PBCRs) and Hospital Based Cancer Registries (HBCRs); set up in 1982
India's apex body for the formulation, coordination and promotion of biomedical research; parent of the NCRP
National surveillance network for epidemic-prone diseases, with district and State surveillance units feeding a central unit
Department-related standing committee of Parliament; its 139th Report recommended that cancer be made notifiable
GS Paper II > Issues relating to health; Government policies and interventions; Separation of powers and Centre-State relations
General Awareness > Current Affairs and Indian Polity
General Awareness > Current Affairs
A disease whose diagnosed cases must, by law, be reported by doctors, hospitals or laboratories to a designated public-health authority.
A registry that records all cancer cases occurring in a defined geographic population, allowing incidence rates to be calculated for that area.
A registry that records cancer cases treated at a particular hospital, used mainly for care patterns and survival rather than population incidence.
A sworn statement filed in court setting out the steps a party has actually taken to give effect to a judicial direction.
A disease not transmitted from person to person — cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease — now the dominant share of India's disease burden.