Mumbai – More than 40,000 AYUSH (Ayurveda, Yoga, Unani, Siddha, and Homeopathy) practitioners have launched a massive, indefinite statewide agitation and hunger strike across Maharashtra. Organised under the banner of the Integrated Doctors Association (IDA), the medical practitioners converged on Mumbai’s Azad Maidan to demand the immediate resolution of their long-pending administrative grievances, registration validation, and statutory service rights.
The friction escalated rapidly when a large cohort of protesting doctors broke away from the designated protest grounds at Azad Maidan and attempted to march aggressively toward the Vidhan Bhavan (Legislative Assembly) premises while raising slogans. To maintain law and order, Mumbai Police intercepted the march at the gates and detained several senior leaders, including Dr. Yogesh Bhalerao and Dr. Amol Ambekar.
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│ MAHARASHTRA AYUSH AGITATION SNAPSHOT │
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│ �� Total Protesting Professionals: ~40,000 Doctors │
│ �� Primary Protest Site: Azad Maidan, Mumbai │
│ �� Security Action: Vidhan Bhavan March Intercepted │
│ ⚡ Key Formats: Indefinite Fast & Total Work Boycott │
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The Friction Points: Why the Practitioners Are Agitating
The 40,000-strong collective, which anchors a substantial portion of public healthcare delivery in Maharashtra’s rural, tier-2, and tier-3 sectors, has listed critical non-negotiable demands before the state administration:
- Validation of CCMP Registration: Protesting physicians are demanding definitive statutory recognition and seamless registration for practitioners holding the Certificate Course in Modern Pharmacology (CCMP).
- Institutional Regularisation: A core demand includes the immediate assimilation of temporary community medical officers into permanent government service brackets, complete with structural grading.
- Rectifying Salary Disparities: The agitating professionals have decried systemic compensation anomalies, demanding immediate pay scale revisions and equitable compensation hikes matching modern medical tiers.
- DACP Scheme Enforcement: Protesters are demand-tracking a government order for the implementation of the Dynamic Assured Career Progression (DACP) benefits, which they allege has been sidelined despite initial state cabinet clearances.
Severe Rural Impact and Broader Medical Friction
Because alternative medicine doctors handle a vital chunk of out-patient care and primary consultations outside major metropolitan zones, the sudden withdrawal of services has severely strained peripheral clinics and local rural state hospitals.
The mass AYUSH strike comes at an incredibly volatile juncture for the state’s broader healthcare network. Simultaneously, mainstream medical wings are already fractured over competing developments:
- The Kalyan-Dombivli Strike: Mainstream government hospital doctors and nurses across local civic-run structures abruptly suspended routine Out-Patient Department (OPD) services to protest an alleged targeted physical assault on on-duty medical staff by a political corporator.
- IMA Statewide Ultimatums: Concurrently, the state unit of the Indian Medical Association (IMA) has issued a separate ultimatum to boycott all government health schemes, fiercely protesting the unilateral implementation of the Maharashtra Clinical Establishments Bill over fears of an oppressive “Inspector Raj” system.
Deadlock at Azad Maidan
As evening approached, hundreds of practitioners remained camped out at Azad Maidan, committing to an unyielding fast unto death until top-tier ministerial interventions yield explicit, written legislative assurances rather than verbal pacifications. State public health and medical education department officials are currently coordinating security and emergency medical response units to handle the sudden gridlock, though formal conciliation talks with the IDA leadership have yet to break the impasse.
