Orders reserved on govt. doctors’ petitions
Issue relates to transfers in wake of stir
25/02/2020, LEGAL CORRESPONDENT,CHENNAI
The Madras High Court has reserved its orders on a batch of writ petitions filed by government doctors who were subjected to inter-district transfers after members of Federation of Government Doctors’ Association (FOGDA) resorted to a strike between October 25 and November 1, last year, pressing various demands including pay hike.
Justice N. Anand Venkatesh deferred his verdict after the government filed an additional affidavit claiming that there was no bar in law to shift the doctors between the Directorate of Public Health and Preventive Medicine (DPH), Directorate of Medical and Rural Health Services (DMRHS) and Directorate of Medical Education (DME).
In the additional affidavit filed through Advocate General Vijay Narayan, the government assured the court the pay structure of the government doctors would be well protected despite being subjected to transfer from one Directorate to another and that their Civil Medical List (CML) seniority would also be maintained without any change.
‘A case of victimisation’
However, advocates C. Kanagaraj and M. Jothimani, representing the doctors, argued that the transfer orders must be quashed on the solitary ground that the en masse transfers were nothing but victimisation and that the action of the government smacked of arbitrariness and mala fide intention couched in the garb of an administrative decision.
They pointed out that the government had not spared even specialist doctors from being transferred to remote stations. The court was told that a cardiothoracic surgeon in the rank of a professor and who was heading the relevant department at a government hospital in Salem, had been transferred to Udhagamanadalam.
Issue relates to transfers in wake of stir
25/02/2020, LEGAL CORRESPONDENT,CHENNAI
The Madras High Court has reserved its orders on a batch of writ petitions filed by government doctors who were subjected to inter-district transfers after members of Federation of Government Doctors’ Association (FOGDA) resorted to a strike between October 25 and November 1, last year, pressing various demands including pay hike.
Justice N. Anand Venkatesh deferred his verdict after the government filed an additional affidavit claiming that there was no bar in law to shift the doctors between the Directorate of Public Health and Preventive Medicine (DPH), Directorate of Medical and Rural Health Services (DMRHS) and Directorate of Medical Education (DME).
In the additional affidavit filed through Advocate General Vijay Narayan, the government assured the court the pay structure of the government doctors would be well protected despite being subjected to transfer from one Directorate to another and that their Civil Medical List (CML) seniority would also be maintained without any change.
‘A case of victimisation’
However, advocates C. Kanagaraj and M. Jothimani, representing the doctors, argued that the transfer orders must be quashed on the solitary ground that the en masse transfers were nothing but victimisation and that the action of the government smacked of arbitrariness and mala fide intention couched in the garb of an administrative decision.
They pointed out that the government had not spared even specialist doctors from being transferred to remote stations. The court was told that a cardiothoracic surgeon in the rank of a professor and who was heading the relevant department at a government hospital in Salem, had been transferred to Udhagamanadalam.
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