Doctors protest ‘loss’ of PG seats, wear black badges

CHANDIGARH: Doctors working in health institutions in Haryana wore black badges on duty in protest against what they termed as the loss of seats suffered by candidates who appeared in counselling for the post-graduate courses on Tuesday.

The members of the Haryana Civil Medical Service (HCMS) association said that previously there were 40% seats reserved for HCMS candidates for PG but the Supreme Court had recently quashed the quota for in-service doctors for all states. The apex court had also directed all the states to notify difficult or remote rural areas to give incentive to in-service doctors by way of 10% marks per year and maximum up to 30% of marks obtained in national eligibility entrance test (NEET) for PG.

Previously, 56 seats were reserved for HCMS doctors. This time only 12 (4 clinical and 8 non-clinical) HCMS candidates could get admission in PG as they had to compete without any incentive marks provided by the state government.

HCMSA president Jasbir Parmar and general secretary Rajesh Sheokand said though the state government also framed a policy notifying difficult areas, it was not accepted by Supreme Court and it sought a fresh notification, which the government had not issued.

However, health minister Anil Vij said that only some doctors were to be blamed for the loss of seats as they had moved the high court challenging the government’s policy as they wanted their own areas to be included in difficult areas’ list.

“Now I have asked the chief secretary to frame the criteria for difficult areas applicable to all departments and also consult legal remembrancer (LR) to find out a way out,” he added.