The agitating resident doctors, owing allegiance to the Maharashtra Association of Resident Doctors (MARD), called off their four-day-old agitation late on Thursday night, hours after the Bombay High Court ordered them to do so and also directed the State Government to provide adequate security to doctors at Government hospitals across Maharashtra.
The doctors ended their agitation after the office bearers of the Central MARD issued a joint staement appealing to them in view of the High Court’s order.
The Maharashtra Government assured the High Court it would deploy 1,100 security personnel in Government hospitals in two batches — 500 by April and another 600 by April 15. The agitating doctors refused to end the stir immediately after High Court order and continued to nurse doubts about the sincerity about the State Government’s intentions.
“We are waiting to see the certified copy of the High Court’s order which spells out the nature of the directive HC bench has given to the State Government with regard to the security to be provided to us in Government hospitals. We will take a call on resuming duties after going
through the order,” said an office-bearer of the Maharashtra Association of Resident Doctors (MARD).
Earlier in the day, MARD filed an affidavit before the high court, maintaining that the resident doctors were ready to resume work but wanted to be assured of their safety from the Government and administration.
On his part, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis appealed to the agitating resident doctors to resume work and assured better security and law enforcement.
In a statement made in the State Assembly on the ongoing resident doctors’ strike, Fadnavis said: “ Because of the agitation, people – particularly the poor – have been put to a lot of inconvenience. Just because there was an assault on a doctor on duty, it was incorrect on the resident doctors’ part to hold people to ransom in a matter they have been doing for the past four days. How can they make the needy patients sufferIJ. I will hold talks with the leaders of the agitating doctors and find a solution to the issues raised by them”.
In its order that ordered the agitating resident doctors to resume work and directed the Maharashtra Government to provide necessary security to the doctors on duty at Government hospitals, the HC bench of Chief Justice Manjula Chellur and Justice Girish Kulkarni asked both the Devendra Fadnavis dispensation and Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) not to take any punitive action against resident doctors who were on mass leave if they resumed duty.
The HC bench said that the State Government should not ignore the orders it had passed in the past with regard to measures to be taken to ensure safety of doctors on duty at Government hospitals. It also asked the State Government to implement strictly a rule to permit entry of only two relatives with a patient at all time and said that such a measure would take care of the safety issues at hospitals to a large extent.
As many as 4,000 residents have been “mass leave” since Monday, crippling medical services at government hospitals across the State. The Maharashtra unit of Indian Medical Association (IMA), which represents doctors in private hospitals in the state, had on Wednesday thrown its lot with the agitating resident doctors at government hospitals.
The ongoing resident doctors’ agitation is a fall-out of a brutal assault on a doctor by the relatives and friends of a road accident vicitim who died during treatment in Dhule district civil hospital in north Maharashtra on March 12.
It may be recalled that Dr Rohan Mamunkar was assaulted by the relatives and family friends of a road accident victim Shatrugna Shivaji lashkar (20) after he died during the course of his treatment at the Dhule hospital.