Click to play videoNew Delhi: Intensifying their anti-quota stir, medicos and students on Thursday staged rallies and struck work in several parts of the country.
In Delhi, junior doctors of three key hospitals including All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) went on mass casual leave and joined medical and university students in a protest near the Supreme Court, where prohibitory orders were in force.
Many protestors were injured when police used teargas and water cannons after the medicos tried to break through a barricade 100 m from the apex court premises.
Several medicos were injured in Kolkata when police baton charged protestors who blocked the arterial Chittaranjan Avenue and Bowbazar street.
Protests were also organised in Indore, Kanpur and Mumbai, where five persons including Maratha Mahasangh president Sunil Pawar were arrested during a stir on Wednesday night.
Students of the Indian Institute of Technology-Kanpur did not attend classes and their protest was backed the faculty.
Students of IIM-Indore would hold a candle-light protest rally to oppose the Centre's decision to introduce reservations in government-aided educational institutions.
Services at Delhi hospitals like the AIIMS, Maulana Azad Medical College and Bara Hindu Rao Hospital were not affected as consultants and faculty members attended to patients.
"We had drawn up contingency plans. All services and facilities are functioning normally," AIIMS spokesperson Shakti Gupta said.
Rapid Action Force and policemen were deployed in large numbers in New Delhi to prevent untoward incidents during the protest, which brought back memories of the stir by medicos in May that had severely affected the functioning of healthcare facilities in several cities.
In Jaipur, some 300 students of the Sawai Man Singh Medical College and Hospital staged a protest and blocked traffic at several places along the busy Tonk Road.
There was a "mild baton charge" against the medicos at Nehru Place when some protestors hurled stones at policemen, officials said.
IIM-Indore media committee members Hushidar Kharas and Shubhshree Chatterjee said the candle-light rally was part of the "silent protests" being planned by IIM students.
The Junior Doctors Association and students of the Mahatma Gandhi Medical College in Indore will hold separate meetings tomorrow to decide on whether to go on strike.
In Kanpur, medicos of GSVM Medical College began a hunger strike even as students of the IIM kept away from classes.
A 24-hour hunger strike by IIT-Kanpur students also ended this morning. Utkarsh, the leader of the protesting medical college students, said a group of medicos had begun the hunger strike that would continue till the Centre withdraws its decision on the reservations for OBCs.
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