While city doctors switch off lights for 15 minutes to protest against quota policy
MUMBAI: Doctors and students protesting against the quotas are in no mood to relent.
While 15 students from the city’s Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) went on a hunger strike on Monday afternoon at 1:30 pm, doctors and young men from all over the city switched off lights of their homes and clinics from 8 to 8:15pm as a mark of protest against the proposed increase in reservation for students of Other Backward Castes in institutes of higher learning. Ten boys and five girls from IIT have gone on the hunger strike. Hundreds of students from IIT have gathered on the campus to give the students on hunger strike moral support.
Rohit Singh, a student from IIT Bombay said, “The strike is against the reservation policy and the government’s indifference towards the demands and needs of the student community. We are against reservations as a policy to garner votes. Reservations haven’t worked and will also demoralise those who rely on merit. The proposal to increase seats is eyewash. It takes years to get faculty and infrastructure in institutes of higher learning.”
Dr Ashish Tiwari , spokesperson of the IMA said, “Hostels in the city are getting polarised and tensions are increasing between students from different castes.”
Reacting to the notices served to doctors of All India Institute of Medical Studies (AIIMS) in Delhi to call of their strike or vacate the hostel premises, Dr. Sunita Kshirsagar, president of Indian Medical Association (IMA), Mumbai said, “How can the government be so ruthless? Students are on hunger strike in Delhi for over a week. They are starving in 50 degrees Celsius while the UPA government holds dinner parties in air-conditioned halls to celebrate their two years in power.”
