Patna, Oct. 15: Doctors across the state will stage a daylong satyagraha (demonstration) on November 16 in response to the call for a nationwide agitation by the Indian Medical Association (IMA).
The IMA has planned the protest against the proposed National Medical Commission Act (NMCA), which will replace the Medical Council of India (MCI), and the Central Clinical Establishment Act (adopted by Bihar) and the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (PCPNDT) Act, 1994.
The decision on the satyagraha was taken at a meeting of doctors associated with the IMA here.
The venue of the non-violent agitation will be decided later. Medical practitioners from all over the state will take part in it.
Honorary secretary of the IMA's Bihar branch Harihar Dikshit said: " Satyagraha has become necessary as the central government is trying to bulldoze the MCI with the NMCA. Moreover, the other two Acts did not bid well for medical professionals."
"All three laws are against professional independence, prestige of doctors and will curb the democratic rights the Constitution has given us. The laws are a symbol of non-scientific approach of the central and state governments and bureaucracy," Harihar said, while informing mediapersons about the decision of state doctors to take part in the IMA call to oppose them.
Senior president-elect of Bihar IMA Sahjanand Prasad Singh, senior vice-president Ajay Kumar, former secretary Rajiv Rajnan and former presidents Basant Singh, Manju Gita Mishra, Sachchidanand Singh and other doctors were present on the occasion.
They said doctors in developed western countries had regulated the medical profession democratically because of which it saw continuous development. But NMCA wanted to give the right of regulating medicine and profession to bureaucrats and those who have not studied medicine.
Medical professionals also demanded that the Bihar government reject the Clinical Establishment Act, 2010, of the Centre, and revert to the clinical establishment law it (Bihar) had formulated in 2007.
They called PCPNDT Act a black law because it contained provisions under which doctors could be jailed for minor mistakes.
