A day after the chief minister urged the Indian Medical Association (IMA), the largest body of doctors in India, to help the government solve the impasse over the Clinical Establishments Act, the IMA declared that it was in no mood to compromise.

It has refused to keep under purview of the Act the registration and renewal of doctors by the government and the bar on individual doctors with private chambers. As a result of the IMA stand, chances of resolving the problem appear remote.

The state government had announced that it wanted doctors to register with it so it could monitor the actual figure practising in Calcutta, a point rejected by the doctors as a “mere ploy to make money”.