Battle for reservation just got murky!

New Delhi, May 23 (UNI) The battle for reservation has gone hi-tech with another front being opened on the electronic turf but it is getting murkier.

A misleading SMS, saying that a fasting AIIMS student has died and the media is not covering the ''event'', is in circulation across the country from the past few days.

And to make the text message ''more authentic'' the updated SMS today carried the students name -- Subhash Srivastava.

The Short Message Service exhorts people to drum up support for the anti-reservation agitation by forwarding it to ten or more people.

But the interesting aspect of the SMS campaign is that the 'Youth for Equality', which is spearheading the agitation, has disowned the message, saying it has not originated from any of its members.

''It is just a rumour.... calls from journalists are pouring in about the SMS. Nobody has died and we have nothing to do with it ,'' Youth for Equality leader Anirudh Lochan clarified.

''We are doctors and if someone falls ill we remove that person from the hunger strike and a fresh set of people come in,'' he added.

He said the SMS was the ''handiwork'' of some vested interest who wanted to weaken and break the agitation.

''The people who have floated the SMS are trying to provoke us to do something in the moment of passion so that the government can get an excuse to break up the agitation,'' Dr Lochan said.

Since more than 130 of the fasting 180 medical students had had taken ill, more students have joined it.

As many as 125 students are now on an indefinite hunger strike at AIIMS which started on May 13.

Talks between the Government and the students have failed to yield any results, protracting the deadlock over the issue.

Medical services in Delhi's premier hospitals continued to be paralysed as the strike by doctors and medical students spilled on the tenth day today.

Resident and junior doctors of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Safdarjang, Guru Tegh Bahadur, Maulana Azad and the Lok Nayak Jaiprakash Narain Hospitals are on strike opposing the Government proposal of 27 per cent reservation for OBC in institutions of higher education.

Doctors of Deen Dayal Upadhyay, Ram Manohar Lohia, Lal Bahadur Shastri and Ihbas hospitals had also joined the stir.

UNI NR VA DS1215