NEW DELHI: Undeterred by serving of termination notices and eviction orders on them, resident doctors of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences on Sunday continued with the agitation against the proposed 27 per cent reservation for OBCs in centres of higher education.

50 new students join

Moreover, they showed that they were prepared for a long-drawn standoff as they replaced the earlier students who were on indefinite relay hunger strike with a new set of 50 students drawn from five different colleges.

For the protesting students, being served with notices, soon after they had turned down the Prime Minister's appeal and rejected the Government's assurance on retaining the number of general category seats, did not come as a surprise.

While the eviction notices, served through the AIIMS administration, had called upon the resident doctors to rejoin duty or vacate the hostels within a day, termination notices had been served on resident doctors of the Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital, the Safdarjang Hospital and the All India Institute of Medical Sciences. These notices had directed the doctors that their services had been terminated and so they should vacate the hostels within 24 hours.

The AIIMS Resident Doctors Association also adopted a confrontationist approach and said the hostels would not be vacated and the protests would continue.

The day also saw a number of students from Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, joining hands with the medicos on strike in AIIMS.

The protesting anti-reservation students also received support from well-known singer Palash Sen of Euphoria fame. A doctor by profession, Palash reached the campus and shared his views with the protesting students.

During the day, pro-reservation demonstrations were also held at AIIMS, which remained the hub of all reservation-related activity.

Several activists of a "Medicos Forum for Equal Opportunities'' took out a march in support of the reservation policy of the Centre. Forum spokesman Vikas Bajpai said such demonstrations would be held in the days to come as well till the issue was firmly resolved.

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