NGO says strike in June violated SC direction

A contempt petition has been filed in the Supreme Court against the Indian Medical Association for calling — and the Centre for not preventing — a nationwide strike by doctors on June 17, 2019.

The strike was held to demonstrate solidarity with the junior doctors of West Bengal in their protest against assault on two junior doctors at the NRS Hospital in Kolkata. The petition filed by an NGO, People for Better Treatment, said that the strike was in violation of a 2014 order by the SC which had “categorically held that doctors should not resort to strike under any condition.”

The strike, the NGO said, had crippled medical services.The petition said the Supreme Court, in its direction, had expressed its “desire that doctors, who carry out a noble service as God’s agents by saving lives of people, should not resort to strikes with any intermittent cause but undertake their responsibility with efficiency and utmost sincerity at all times”.The petition said that despite the ‘repeated and clear calls from the highest court of the land,’ doctors across India have continued to resort to strikes, disrupting medical services across the country.

Doctors in West Bengal had protested the assault on two junior doctors at the NRS Hospital in Kolkata by the relatives of a patient who had died at the hospital.

Subsequently, doctors across the country observed a one-day strike in solidarity with their West Bengal colleagues, withdrawing non-essential medical services, including outpatient department services. Hospitals, however, had maintained emergency, casualty and ICU services.

The Centre said it is mulling a new law for doctors' security.