The junior doctors’ strike in Bihar, which crippled medical services in the state’s six medical colleges for the second day on Tuesday, got embroiled in politics after the Opposition RJD came out in support of its MLA whose bodyguards had fired on some doctors to spark off the state-wide strike.
As the police in Gaya district looked for the absconding MLA from Belaganj, Surendra Yadav, following the doctors’ insistent demand for his arrest as a precondition for ending the strike, senior RJD leaders described him as innocent and justified the firing by two of his bodyguards. But deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi of the BJP supported the call for Mr Yadav’s arrest.
“The MLA’s bodyguards simply carried out their duty of protecting him when they saw the junior doctors turned violent. The junior doctors were in a drunken condition during the incident that night,” said RJD Rajya Sabha member Ram Kripal Yadav about Sunday evening’s incident at Gaya’s Anugraha Narayan Magadh Medical College and Hospital (ANMMCH). Senior RJD leader Shakil Ahmed Khan alleged the state government was “trying to persecute our MLA”.
But the paralysed medical services, mainly at the emergencies and OPDs, at all six medical colleges and hospitals in Bihar for the second consecutive day, prompted thousands of people stage angry demonstrations against the striking doctors outside ANMMCH. At PMCH in Patna, the state’s largest hospital, many helpless patients were seen leaving to private nursing homes reportedly at the behest of agents employed by these costlier healthcare providers. “We are facing trouble getting doctors to see the patients lying on the beds, knowing what medicines to give them and what to do when something looks like going wrong,” said Leela Devi, a distraught relative of a patient admitted at the PMCH.