AYUSH strike hits day 17. File still missing
Warangal’s AYUSH house surgeons and PGs want the stipend parity a Telangana High Court already said exists on paper. The Congress government has yet to show the paper.
AYUSH trainees in Warangal are seeking implementation of stipend parity recorded in earlier orders and a High Court direction.
Seventeenth day and counting: AYUSH house surgeons and postgraduate doctors at Ananthalakshmi Government Ayurvedic Medical College and Teaching Hospital, Warangal, have stayed on indefinite strike since August 4, demanding stipends on par with Allopathy trainees. Their JAC says officials hinted at only a 15% hike; no government order backing that surfaced in the material reviewed. [JAC claim, not a published proposal.]
The history is not in dispute: the Telangana High Court recorded that the State itself issued G.O. Ms. No. 77 (02.03.2009) and G.O. Ms. No. 152 (03.11.2016) to enhance AYUSH stipends on par with Allopathy, and later directed parity for petitioners from 2016 relying on G.O. Ms. No. 88 (18.05.2021). The State’s line then was that no rule mandated parity and AYUSH duties differed. The Court did not buy it.
On the ground, the JAC has added a relay hunger strike from August 17, and ran a postcard campaign on August 10 to Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy, Deputy CM and Finance Minister Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka, and Health Minister Damodar Raja Narasimha. In the sources reviewed, the Health Department’s pages list a Commissioner of AYUSH, but no current order or public response on the demand. If the BJP or TDP plan to grandstand here, they might start by asking the Congress government to release the order it says it is “considering”.
The parity is in past GOs and a High Court direction; the Congress-run administration has not bothered to show where it went.