A woman with her child at the junior doctors’ OPD at Medical College and Hospital. Picture by Pradip Sanyal

The striking junior doctors refused to join work after two “fruitless” meetings with the authorities on Tuesday, keeping services paralysed at SSKM Hospital and Medical College and Hospital.

More than 800 junior doctors in the two state-run hospitals in the city have been taking part in the “indefinite ceasework” since Monday to protest their “low stipend”.

Two delegations comprising 10 doctors each met health minister Surjya Kanta Mishra and a three-member committee set up to review the stipend structure and recommend a hike. “The meetings were fruitless. The government did not specify the quantum of hike. We have decided to continue with the ceasework,” said Ashutosh Mukherjee, a junior doctor at SSKM.

The minister said he had requested the agitating doctors to call off the strike. “But they did not give us any assurance. I told them their stipends would be raised from September 1,” Mishra said.

Reiterating his earlier stand, the minister said the government would not “pressure” the doctors to call off the ceasework.

While the government and junior doctors are fighting it out, services in the two hospitals where around 2,500 patients turn up in the OPDs daily were almost non-existent for the second consecutive day on Tuesday.

Sheikh Saifuddin, 35, was found lying on the floor of the emergency department of Medical College. Head covered with a thick, blood-soaked bandage, he was shaking violently in pain. “Please do something. No doctor is attending to him,” mother Aslima Begum wailed.

At SSKM, untreated patients lay scattered across the emergency ward. Several planned surgeries were cancelled in both hospitals.

The agitating doctors, however, claimed they were running parallel OPDs. “At SSKM and Medical College, our OPDs registered 114 and 600 patients, respectively,” said a doctor.

People for Better Treatment, an NGO, has decided to file a PIL, challenging the legality of the ceasework.