Overview
- Maharashtra now has more than 370 living wills on file, with BMC records listing 85 from Mumbai while another official estimate places the city near 100.
- The Supreme Court recognized passive euthanasia in 2018 and on January 24, 2023 ordered local bodies to accept, securely store, and manage advance medical directives.
- BMC has named ward medical officers to receive applications, and a citywide committee to decide on cases is pending government guidelines.
- The state is developing an online portal to digitise and verify living wills for clinicians, yet the system remains overdue despite an earlier timeline.
- Many Mumbai applicants are currently healthy and interest has grown after the Harish Rana case, and a living will tells doctors to withhold or withdraw life support when death is medically inevitable.