The bureaucrats are in a fix in the wake of the order of the single Bench of the Uttarakhand High Court that says transfer of the pharmacists working in the health sub-centres in the mountains should be done with immediate effect. The order casts its shadow on the notification issued by the State Government recruiting 536 pharmacists for the sub-centres, mostly in the mountainous region, to take care of the health of the people in view of the fact that the service of the sub-centres were crumbling because of the dearth of doctors. Importantly, the notification mentioned that such pharmacists once recruited for the sub-centres would not be transferred either to the community health centres (CHC) or the primary health centres (PHC). And this is the clause of the notification that the pharmacists challenged in the High Court after working there for some years, asking the court to clear decks for their normal transfer to the higher centres.
The single Bench clearing the decks, citing the right of the pharmacists to equality of opportunities, has placed the bureaucrats in a dilemma. They think that if the pharmacists are allowed to be transferred to the higher centres things in the sub-centres would go back to the square one with the service again crumbling down for lack of doctors to take their places. “However, the election on the threshold, the ruling party leaders are pressuring us to issue a fresh notification in consonance with the ruling of the court’s single Bench. Keeping the interests of the hill people in view, we have almost decided to challenge the single Bench ruling in the double Bench. But it is proving difficult to proceed, given the pressure the politicians are putting on us. It is certain that once we act on the single bench ruling the pharmacists would use their clout with the politicians to get transferred to places in the plains like Dehradun, Haridwar and Udham Singh Nagar. How can we ignore the interests of the hill people to humour the politicians who are out to please the pharmacists, thinking that they would vote en bloc for themIJ” said a senior bureaucrat who requested anonymity.
However, there is another snag that is worrying the bureaucrats. “If we are to assume that the court has declared the notification that recruited the pharmacists as null and void it means that the recruitment stands cancelled. Things are still murky,” another senior bureaucrat said.