MYSORE: Even as medical officers from primary health centres (PHCs) in rural areas were taken on by the K.R. Hospital here on Friday to restore medical services, the junior doctors' protest against reservation for OBCs in institutions of higher education has entered its eleventh day.

Medical Superintendent of K.R. Hospital Satyanarayana told The Hindu that medical officers from PHCs and non-clinical staff of the Mysore Medical College had been enlisted at K.R. Hospital in view of the strike by junior doctors. Staff of the hospital had been asked not to seek leave in view of the boycott of work by junior doctors.

Doctors from PHCs had been enlisted at the emergency, casualty and out-patient department (OPD) of the hospital, he said.

Medical students belonging to Other Backward Classes joined a pro-reservation demonstration taken out by the Dalit Sangharsha Samithi (DSS) in front of B.R. Ambedkar's statue on the Town Hall premises on Friday.

They urged the Government to remain firm on its decision to provide 27 per cent reservation to OBCs in institutions of higher education. The Government should not bow to the pressure tactics of medical students belonging to forward castes, DSS activists said.

Pro-reservation

Staging a protest under the joint aegis of DSS and the Backward Classes Pro-Reservation Struggle Committee, the activists shouted slogans against "Manuvadis" for denying weaker sections their Constitutional right to higher education.

They held aloft banners that said: "Reservation is not charity, but a Constitutional right".

Meanwhile, junior doctors of the Mysore Medical College and the JSS Medical College, who comprise the Mysore chapter of the "Youth for Equality", distributed handwritten pamphlets against the reservation proposal .

"We decided to distribute handwritten pamphlets as people have a tendency to throw away photocopies," a junior doctor said.

The "Youth for Equality" claimed that private medical practitioners and senior doctors of the city would join the anti-reservation rally to be taken out from J.K. Grounds on Saturday.

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