NEW DELHI, 22 May 2006 — Medical students protesting against new caste-based quotas in institutions of higher learning yesterday rejected Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s plea to call off their countrywide strike, saying their demands had not been addressed.
“The appeal carries no meaning as it makes no mention of our demands,” Kumar Harsh of Youth for Equality, one of the pressure groups leading the agitation against the new 27 percent reservation for other backward classes (OBCs) in elite educational institutions, told reporters here.
Contending that the new quotas would raise the number of reserved seats to nearly 50 percent, the striking students are demanding that these be rolled back.
On Saturday, the protesters had rejected a compromise formula suggested by a Group of Ministers (GoM) under which the new quotas would be implemented only after additional seats were created in medical colleges to ensure that the general category did not suffer. Defense Minister Pranab Mukherjee, a member of the GoM, made the suggestion to student representatives but this was immediately rejected.
The GoM made a similar recommendation in its report to the prime minister Saturday.
Manmohan Singh had tasked the GoM, which also included Human Resource Development Minister Arjun Singh and Finance Minister P. Chidambaram, with finding a solution to the doctors’ stir.
“The minister had said that till further infrastructure was put in place, the government would not implement the additional reservation, but we unanimously rejected it,” said Vinod Patro, president of resident doctors association of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS). The institution is one of the five colleges here leading the strike.
“We have cleared our stand on reservation and till a total roll back decision is conveyed to us, we will not relent,” Patro told IANS.
Soon after medical students rejected Manmohan Singh’s plea, authorities at the AIIMS asked the doctors to either join work or vacate their hostel rooms.
