Srinagar, Sep 1: CPI(M) leader and MLA Kulgam, Mohammad Yousuf Tarigami, has extended his support to the ongoing protest by MBBS and BDS interns across Jammu and Kashmir and urged the government to immediately revise their monthly stipend, currently fixed merely at Rs 12,300, a figure that has remained unchanged for nearly six years.
Interns at SKIMS Bemina, GMC Srinagar, GMC Jammu, GMC Anantnag and GMC Baramulla have been on an indefinite strike since August 31, demanding that the stipend be raised to Rs 30,000 a month. Tarigami, as per a statement, said the demand was neither excessive nor unreasonable but fair compensation for young doctors who are often the first to attend to patients in emergency wards and who routinely work shifts stretching to 24 or even 36 hours.
“These are young men and women who have spent years training to serve the sick, and today they stand on the roads instead of inside hospitals, because the system has failed to value their labour,” he said. “A stipend of Rs 12,300 a month, unchanged since 2019, insults the effort these interns put in every single day.”
He noted that a committee constituted by the Health and Medical Education Department in 2023 had itself recommended raising the stipend to around Rs 25,000, yet no formal order has followed. “When your own committee tells you, the current amount is inadequate, and you still let the file gather dust for years, it stops being a matter of process and becomes a matter of will,” he said.
The strike also raises a larger question of equal work for equal pay, and the interns in J&K earn a fraction of what their counterparts receive in several other states despite comparable duties and training.
He appealed to the Health and Medical Education Minister and the administration to treat the matter with urgency rather than assurances and to issue a formal revision order without further delay.
“Doctors who serve patients round the clock deserve dignity, not delay,” Tarigami said, adding that continued inaction risked disrupting healthcare services across the Union Territory at the cost of ordinary patients who depend on government hospitals.
