Striking docs to intensify stir, call for nationwide bandh tomorrow

New Delhi, May 24 (UNI) The ongoing anti-reservation agitation shows no signs of abating with doctors deciding to make their strike more ''aggressive and intense,'' and organise a ''civil disobedience'' protest tommorrow against the decision to introduce legislation for 27 per cent reservation for OBCs in institutions of higher learning.

The Indian Medical Association (IMA) has called for a nation-wide 'medical bandh' tomorrow to opposing the Government's decision.

''The government has taken no note of our demands and now our agitation will get more agressive and intense. It will spread to every corner of the country,'' Dr Anirudh Lochan, a spokesman for 'Youth for Equality' -- spearheading the agitation -- told UNI late last night.

As the strike entered its eleventh day today, the medicos here staged peaceful sit-in demonstrations outside hospitals where walk-in interviews were being held to recruit retired and junior doctors to normalise medical services crippled due to the agitation, appealing to the candidates not to become a ''tool'' in the hands of the government to weaken the agitation.

At Safdarjung Hospital, senior consultants refused to hold the interviews, saying the faculty was opposed to such ''provocative steps by the government''. The agitating doctors and students said they will foil all such ''tactics'' of the government to tide over the crisis, and claimed that most of the candidates had been convinced not to appear for the interviews.

''We will go on come what may...The Government has stabbed us in the back but that will not weaken us. We appeal to people from all walks of life to support us and join the civil disobedience hours tomorrow,'' Dr Harsh Kumar, leader of Youth for Equality, said.

The striking medicos have appealed to people from all walks of life to boycott work from 0900 hrs to 1200 hrs tomorrow as a mark of ''civil disobedience''.

IMA General Secretary Vinay Aggarwal said the state branches of the Association had been authorised to chart out the own strategies and tomorrow's bandh call was a unanimous decision.

Besides, Punjab, Gujarat, Orissa, Haryana and Delhi, several other states have confirmed participation in the medical bandh, he said.

In Kolkata, junior doctors started an indefinite cease work in seven medical colleges in the city today, demanding a roll back of the Government decision to increase the OBC quota in institutions of higher education. The medicos of five state-run Medical colleges and two Dental colleges also staged sit-in demonstrations in front of the institutions as part of their programme.

MORE UNI TEAM VD PC1752