Doctors on contract associated with two different organisations are divided over the matter of regularisation of their services.

While doctors associated with the Contract Doctors' Association are planning to go on a hunger strike from March 25 and have decided to boycott the interview to be conducted by the Bihar Public Service Commission for regularisation of their services, those under the Bihar State Contract Doctors' Association are opposed to the idea.

Contract Doctors' Association general Secretary Abhishek Sinha said: "Contractual doctors associated with Bihar State Contract Doctors' Association have done a written agreement with the health department according to which it would try its best to regularise their services but we (CDA) have not done any kind of agreement. We have no more faith on the government machinery. We have decided to go on an indefinite hunger strike from March 25 at any cost. The state government is saying that our services would be regularised through the BPSC interview scheduled to be conducted on March 31 but we have seen earlier that the process takes huge time. We do not want to wait any longer. So, we have decided to go on hunger strike. Earlier also, we went on a strike on February 18 but for some reasons we withdrew the strike on March 13 but this time we would not withdraw strike until our demands are met."

Amitabh Sinha, president, Bihar State Contract Doctors' Association, said their members had decided to take part in the BPSC interview in peaceful manner.

"The state government is going to fill 2,887 posts through the interview. A huge recruitment drive is going to be conducted by the state health department. We don't want to miss this opportunity. We are certain that all the doctors on contract would be appointed through the process and even if few are left, we are sure they would be recruited by next year. So why to go on strike when our demands are being fulfilled?" Amitabh said.

Amitabh added that so far as the controversy of increasing the retirement age of doctors is concerned, his association was not supporting the idea to extend it from present limit of 65 to 67 or 70.

Sources said doctors associated with the Bihar State Contract Doctors' Association also went on an indefinite strike on February 28 night with the demand of regularisation of services but they withdrew it in March's second week after the government assured to fulfil their demands.