New Delhi: Medical students and doctors will their continue agitation against the reservation policy. They decided this after organising a rally in New Delhi on Saturday.
The medicos said their strike would continue, as the Government had not assured them that the number of general category seats would not decrease with the 27 per cent reservation for OBCs.
"Meetings (with the Health Secretary) so far have not clarified that the number of general category seats would not go down due to the implementation of the quota," said Vinod Patro, President of the AIIMS' Resident Doctors Association.
The Government has announced that the quota would be implemented from next year, but the process of increasing seats in medical institutes will take about three to four years, Patro said.
"If the increase in seats will take place over so many years, the implementation of the quota should also occur in phases," he demanded.
The medicos have also been demanding the setting up of a committee of experts to review the reservation policy, on which there has not been any word from the government.
The Government had earlier in the day said it was hopeful that the 16-day long medical strike against the 27 per cent OBC quota would end soon.
Health Secretary P K Hota and AIIMS Director P Venugopal visited the Prime Minister's Office on Saturday morning. However, details of the visit were not available.
Medical students and doctors, who are organising a rally in Delhi, had intense deliberations after meeting with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Friday.
They also met Hota last night, but decided to continue their agitation till the talks with the Government were on. The strike was discussed at a high-level meeting attended by medical superintendents of all government hospitals in Delhi, Hota and the Cabinet Secretary, sources said.
At the meeting, Venugopal proposed the number of seats in the institute could be increased from the current 50 to 90. However, a Cabinet decision was pending on the matter.
Each of the Central Government-run medical college has been asked to give details on the infrastructure and their capacity to increase seats, officials said.
Meanwhile, health services remained affected due to the strike with only emergency services functioning in most of the government hospitals. A doctor in LNJP Hospital said that only skeletal services were running with no new patients being admitted.
At RML hospital, Dr N K Chaturvedi, Medical Superintendent said "yesterday, 2,000 patients visited our OPD but limited operations are being carried out. Sixty four of the 131 senior resident doctors are absent and 82 of the 164 junior residents are absent."
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