Notices issued to seize property, arrest doctors over ₹10L bond

COVID DUTY ROW

Notices issued to seize property, arrest doctors over ₹10L bond

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Ahmedabad:07.10.2021

To tighten the noose around doctors who did not respond on being summoned for Covid-19 duty during the second wave, the state government has started issuing notices to them for attachment of their properties or properties belonging to the guarantors who stood for them in lieu of the Rs 10-lakh bond executed during admission to PG medical courses.

The state government had ordered doctors who studied at government medical colleges and yet to discharge their bonds, to join Covid duty.

In the notices issued under provisions of the Bombay Land Revenue Code in September, the government authorities asked the doctors to either pay the bond amount and discharge themselves from the mandatory three-year rural service or properties belonging to them or their legal heirs or their guarantors would be attached and put on auction to recover the Rs 10 lakh bond amount.

In case of failure to pay the amount, the government also threatened to arrest them and put them behind bars and said that a proposal to this effect would be sent to the collectors and district magistrates concerned.

This threat has created panic among doctors and those who stood guarantors when they took admission and their families did not have enough money to pay off the bonds, and had relied on relatives to stand as guarantors.

In some cases, medical college authorities have issued notices to former students asking them to pay Rs 10 lakh and get themselves discharged from the bond. They have been given a seven-day period to pay up or the bank guarantee issued at the time of their admission would be forfeited.

Following the government’s communications, as many as 45 doctors have paid the bond amount and freed themselves from the liability. They are among 251 doctors, who had taken admission to PG medical courses before 2013, and who have approached the Gujarat high court against the state government’s notices issued in June for failure to turn up for Covid duty.

During the hearing on Wednesday, the petitioner doctors’ advocate, Amit Panchal, raised the issue. In response, the government pleader promised the court that the authorities would be told to go slow against the doctors in this regard.

After the government gave an assurance of going slow, the bench of Justice J B Pardiwala and Justice V D Nanavati asked it to file a reply in this regard