NEW DELHI, 12 July 2006 — Not satisfied with Union Health Minister A. Ramadoss having received a judicial snub, the doctors of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) have planned to corner him further. The decision by Ramadoss to dismiss AIIMS’ Director P. Venugopal received a setback last week when on being granted a stay by the Supreme Court, the latter resumed duty on Saturday. Buoyed with Venugopal back in office, the anti-quota group, “Youth for Equality” (YFE), has decided to invoke the Right to Information Act (RTI) against Ramadoss for “misusing” his powers as president of AIIMS.
YFE also wants clarification on Ramadoss having wrongly availed of facilities provided by AIIMS. On this, YFE member Jitin said, “The health minister of the country automatically becomes the president of AIIMS, but the AIIMS office falls under the office of profit act. So we want to know how he cannot avail the facilities of the institute.” Besides, he accused the minister of having “used AIIMS’ guesthouse for himself as well as his relatives” and taken many other “indirect benefits”.
Questioning Ramadoss’ capacity to treat patients at AIIMS when the doctors were on strike, a YFE member said. “How could he treat patients at AIIMS just like that? Does that mean that any doctor can come and start practicing in the institute?”
While Venugopal is back in his office, Ramadoss has not stopped interfering in his domain. Soon after taking charge, Venugopal issued a show-cause notice to AIIMS Registrar V.P. Gupta, who was asked to explain his conduct, within two weeks, on the release of salaries of medicos for the anti-reservation strike period in May. Gupta was also asked to hand over charge for the period to his junior S.P. Soni. However, Gupta reported for duty on Monday, as the Health Ministry directed that the director’s order “may not be given effect to”.
The order given by the Health Ministry said, “As per the schedule of the AIIMS regulations, 1999, the appointing authority for the Group-A post in the institute is the governing body.
