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Semmalai makes fresh plea, but students stand firm

By Our Special Correspondent

Chennai May 20. Hours after government doctors dropped their strike plan, the Health Minister, S.Semmalai, today made a fresh appeal to the striking medicos to give up their nearly month-long struggle and return to classes.

However, his plea came with the firm assertion that there was no scope for further talks on the students' demand for withdrawal of a government order permitting private medical colleges.

"There is no necessity for further talks the medicos. They should withdraw their strike on their own, following the footsteps of the government doctors," the Minister told the media at the State Secretariat here.

Mr. Semmalai said the suspension and other disciplinary proceedings slapped on the students would be "automatically dropped" if they returned to classes. The Jayalalithaa Government was not vindictive and would never be so. Also, there would be no hurdles to their getting hall tickets for the annual examinations, scheduled to begin on June 2. "There is no deadline for collecting hall tickets, they can collect them before the examination date," he said.

After the Tamil Nadu Government Doctors Association shelved their plan of agitation, scheduled for tomorrow, several students conveyed to authorities their willingness to return to colleges.

`No question of withdrawing GO'

To a question, he said the GO (211), which relaxed guidelines for starting private colleges, would not affect the students in any manner. Hence, there was no question of withdrawing it. But, their other demands of increase in stipend and rollback of tuition fee hike had been conceded.

The stipend for house surgeons and postgraduate students was increased by 10 per cent and the fee hike reduced, he said.

Mr. Semmalai said the doctors who participated in the token strike on May 14 would lose a day's salary, but a decision on whether the action against them should be reconsidered was yet to be taken.

Health department officials said orders to stop temporary recruitment of doctors were issued.

Officials estimated that about Rs.5 lakhs was spent on recruiting doctors at Rs.500 a day and Rs.1,000 per surgery.

Meanwhile, student leaders, who were locked in a day-long meeting, indicated that their protest would continue. Though over 400 postgraduate students withdrew from the strike today, only 15 house surgeons and 10 MBBS students, who form the core of the agitators, submitted written declarations pulling out of the protest. Suspension orders were served on 5,000 undergraduate students.

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