New Delhi, May 31
Bringing to an end their 18-day- long hunger strike, medicos protesting against reservation have decided to comply with the Supreme Court’s directive to call off their stir.
After a day that was marked by hectic parleys and back-to-back general body meetings that witnessed sharp differences in opinion, the striking medicos have agreed to return to work and resume classes.
The students of five medical colleges and seven Resident Welfare Associations, including those of AIIMS, Lady Hardinge, Safdurjung and Maulana Azad Medical College, have decided to call off their strike and resume duties beginning tonight. Undergraduate students will resume classes from tomorrow.
Students from IITs, JNU, Delhi University and schools that have joined in the anti-quota movement have, however, announced their decision to continue their protest over the government’s refusal to accede to their demands.
“We will continue our protest and will probably move our base to either IITs or JNU. But the agitation that has begun will not die down,” said Vidushi, a DU student.
Some school students who have plunged into the movement said, “Even if the RDAs have to call off the strike we will continue. They have done enough for us and now it is our turn to carry forward their agitation”.
Union Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss who donned the white overall and a stethoscope came to visit patients in the AIIMS this morning.
The minister, who spent several minutes examining patients, has threatened that doctors failing to resume duties would be terminated and replaced with new doctors who will be permanent.
Owing to the medical bandh called by the Delhi Medical Association, health services in the Capital remained paralysed. Only Emergency and Casualty units functioned in hospitals while the Out Patient Department and surgical units remained shut.
The situation was just as bad in private hospital like Sir Ganga Ram, Fortis, Max Health Care centres with the OPDs remaining closed.
Meanwhile, the five groups of experts under the Oversight Committee constituted to facilitate implementation of 27 per cent quotas in central educational institutions will meet on June 8 to help chalk out a roadmap for reservation.
Committee Chairman Veerappa Moily said June 8 had been fixed for the meeting since only one chairman of the sub groups could make it to today’s meeting.
Moily, however, declined to give details of what transpired at the meeting. “We will discuss how to go in for innovations to implement reservations, but will also ensure that merit and brand names of elite institutions remain intact,” he said.
