The state health department on Tuesday ordered a two-day pay cut for the nurses who had joined the recent ceasework at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital. ?The salary deduction order was received today,? confirmed principal Utpal Datta.

Medical Service Centre (MSC), a city-based doctors? organisation, alleged that the government was trying to transfer all 32 nurses who had started the ceasework.

?Twenty-two nurses, released from other hospitals, joined RG Kar last week. It?s clear that those who took part in the agitation would be eventually transferred,? said Rituparna Mahapatra, member of MSC?s Calcutta district secretariat.

Principal Datta denied the allegation, but did not rule out the possibility of transferring the nurses. Of the 32 nurses, the health department had suspended one and transferred two.

Chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee had said recently that if necessary, nurses would be brought in from other states to run the hospital.

The agitation started when the RG Kar authorities served a showcause notice on the nurse-in-charge of the radiotherapy department, Momina Khatun, on May 6, for ?illegally occupying? a room and using it as a storeroom. Dissatisfied with the explanation offered by her, the authorities slapped another showcause on her on May 24.

One of the agitating nurses had said that they had been allowed to use the room as a storeroom.

To protest the authorities? decision, the 32 nurses, including Khatun, launched a no-work demonstration on May 26. A number of surgeries had to be cancelled and normal work at the hospital could not be performed for three days.

The health department decided on stern measures against the nurses.

Khatun was suspended and two of her colleagues were transferred.

?The health department was very tough in its stand against the agitating nurses,? said hospital superintendent Pradip Kumar Mitra.

Principal Datta denied the nurses? contention and insisted that they had been illegally occupying the room. ?The nurses did not have the permission of the departmental head to use the room as a storeroom,? he said.

The MSC plans a ?big movement? against the treatment being meted out to the nurses.

The organisation does not support the way the nurses had disrupted activities at the hospital. ?But we think punishing anyone without a proper investigation is illegal, and the government has done precisely that,? said association leader Mahapatra.