PINAKI MAJUMDAR
Jamshedpur, Aug 23: The newly elected team of the Jamshedpur chapter of the Indian Medical Association (IMA) will work to restore the sanctity of the medical professionals.
Soon after the announcement of the IMA election results, Dr. GC Manjhi, who defeated his rival Dr. A P Patra by a margin of 189 votes to become the president, said his team would work hard to restore the respect and sanctity of the medical profession and that he would try to ensure that doctors get the benefit of Medical Protection Act ( MPA )
Notably, the implementation of the Medical Protection Act has been a long-pending demand of the medical fraternity in Jharkhand.
” We want the state government to incorporate certain changes in the bill drafted for this purpose earlier to ensure benefits for doctors as well as patients,” explained the new IMA president.
The Jharkhand unit of IMA has already raised repeated concerns over incidents of violence against healthcare workers even during the first and second waves of Covid-19.
Several incidents of assaults on doctors and medical students were reported in state-run hospitals across Jharkhand since the formation of the state back in 2000, triggering protests by medical practitioners.
Manjhi said the Medical Protection Act has already been implemented in 18 states and IMA wants Jharkhand to be the 19th state to implement the law.
The Act mandates imprisonment of up to three years and a fine of Rs 50,000 for attacks on doctors, nurses, and hospital establishments.
The results of the election held under the supervision of a magistrate for the first time and under CCTV surveillance were declared late last evening.
The election was held through a secret ballot.
Dr Saurabh Chaudhary was elected as the new secretary. He defeated Dr Santosh Gupta by a margin of 186 votes.
Underlining his priorities the new IMA secretary said efforts would be made to make a list of quacks operating in rural and semi-urban areas to that curbs could be imposed by closing down their clinics which they operate in an unauthorized manner.
The IMA election was held for 28 posts. The total number of candidates were 58. Out of 950 members, 558 took part in the biennial polls.
The counting of votes which began at 5.30 pm on Sunday evening continued till 9 pm after which the results were declared.
This was the first time in the last 10 years that the turnout of doctors participating in the polls was more.
Dr Mritunjay Singh, the outgoing secretary expressed satisfaction over the turnout. “It was nice to see that the elections were held in a cordial atmosphere. Even after the results were announced, there was no bitterness among the medical fraternity, ” he said.
