The Bombay High Court on Tuesday took the agitating resident doctors to task, as it observed their act of abstaining from work in Government hospital across Maharashtra as “shameful” and sternly told them to resign if they did not want to work. As 4,000-odd resident doctors struck work for the second consecutive day, a HC division bench of Chief Justice Manjula Chellur and Justice GS Kulkarni upbraided the agitating doctors and asked them to conduct themselves.
Hearing a public interest litigation by social activist Afak Mandaviya seeking action against the doctors who have gone on “mass leave” in Government hospitals in the State since Monday, the Chief Justice observed, “If you (doctors) do not want to work, then resign. You are not factory workers that you will resort to such protests. Shame on you. How can doctors behave in such a mannerIJ”. The Maharashtra Association of Resident Doctors (MARD), which has been made a party in the petition, sought to distance itself from the agitation, by telling the court that it had not called the strike and had urged all the agitating doctors to report back to work.
The HC bench was annoyed further, when the petitioner’s lawyer Datta Mane brought to the attention of the judges that the MARD had last year given an undertaking to the HC, while hearing another PIl, that it would not call for or go on a strike in future and would resolve its disputes in a peaceful manner.