PHOTOS: K. GOPINATHAN

FOR AND AGAINST QUOTA: Litterateur U. R. Ananthamurthy (second from left) at a signature campaign seeking reservation for OBCs, during a dharna staged by the Students' Associations' Joint Action Forum near the Mahatma Gandhi statue, in Bangalore on Tuesday.

New Delhi: The anti-reservation stir spread on Tuesday, crippling services in State-run hospitals in the national capital and other places, even as groups demanding a quota for OBCs also took to the streets.

As medical students and junior doctors continued their protests in Delhi, Bihar, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Goa, Tripura, Madhya Pradesh and other States, pro-reservation bodies like the OBC Mahapanchayat joined the fray and staged rallies in support of the proposed quota, saying it was the only way to ensure quality education for poor students.

Activists of the OBC Mahapanchayat and All India Pasmanda Muslim Mahaj staged a sit-in at Jantar Mantar here to demand implementation of the proposed 27 per cent quota for OBCs in elite educational institutions. Over 400 activists of the Mahatma Phule Samta Parishad, the outfit for OBCs floated by NCP leader and Maharashtra Minister Chhagan Bhujbal, also courted arrest after a demonstration in Mumbai.

"Deserted patients"

There were also calls for the medical students to call off their stir. While Speaker Somnath Chatterjee appealed to them to withdraw their protest, the medical community of Tamil Nadu, led by the Doctors' Association for Social Equality, said the agitation was "completely unethical" as the medicos had "deserted patients."

In most places, emergency services and out patient departments were maintained by senior doctors and house surgeons as thousands of patients faced problems in hospitals attached to Government medical colleges.

Resident doctors in Delhi's hospitals continued their indefinite strike for the fourth day, demanding an immediate roll-back of the quota proposal. "Not a single resident has reported on duty today," said Subrato Mandal of the Resident Doctors' Association of the prestigious All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS).

With medical services in the Capital hit badly, the Delhi Government issued notices to junior doctors to rejoin duty or face action. Officials said OPD services were functioning at 30 per cent of the normal capacity and an action plan had been framed to ensure the ICU, emergency, casualty and trauma services were not affected.

PHOTOS: A. M. FARUQUI

Junior doctors, medical and engineering students form a human chain in Bhopal against the Central Government's proposed reservation policy. _

Services affected

Services in hospitals across Punjab, Haryana and Chandigarh were affected as medicos, paramedical staff and doctors continued their protest.

Students of Mullana Medical College in Ambala blocked the Ambala-Haridwar road while an MBBS student in Amritsar on hunger strike fell critically ill and was admitted to hospital. In Bihar, the students took to the streets to protest the quota proposal, partially crippling essential health services. In Patna, protestors burnt an effigy of HRD Minister Arjun Singh and disrupted traffic.

There were also reports of medicos adopting novel means to oppose the proposed quota. While some students of the Gandhi Medical College in Madhya Pradesh shaved their heads, those of the VSS Medical College in Orissa pulled rickshaws in Burla town. Medicos in Rajasthan observed a token strike. Protestors put up barricades on the Jawaharlal Nehru Road in Jaipur and jammed traffic for an hour. There were also protests in Bikaner, Ajmer, Kota, Udaipur and Jodhpur.

In Tripura, students of the Government Medical College in Agartala boycotted classes while students in Goa announced they would go on strike on Wednesday. — PTI

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