DEHRADUN: Former Rudrapur MLA Rajkumar Thukral and several of his supporters were detained on Thursday while they were on their way to submit a memorandum to Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami over the shortage of specialist doctors at the district hospital in Udham Singh Nagar.
The police action came ahead of the Chief Minister’s participation in the ‘Mukhyamantri Yuva Vidyarthi Manthan’ programme at the JC Public School ground in Rudrapur. After receiving information about Thukral’s plan to meet Dhami, police stopped the former legislator and his supporters before they could reach the venue and took them into custody.
Thukral sought to draw the Chief Minister’s attention to the shortage of specialist doctors at the Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru District Hospital in Rudrapur and the difficulties faced by patients. He said the facility was Udham Singh Nagar’s main government hospital and catered to a large number of patients from Rudrapur and other parts of the district.
According to Thukral, the lack of specialists frequently forces the hospital authorities to refer patients to larger medical institutions for advanced treatment. Such referrals, he said, place an additional financial burden on families while also causing delays and considerable inconvenience.
“The vacant posts of specialist doctors at the district hospital must be filled at the earliest. This is a serious public-interest issue directly affecting patients and their families,” Thukral told TNIE.
He maintained that neither he nor his supporters intended to stage a protest or disrupt the Chief Minister’s programme. “We only wanted to meet the Chief Minister and submit a memorandum highlighting the poor healthcare situation at the district hospital. However, we were stopped and detained before reaching the programme venue,” he said, urging the state government to take an immediate decision on the appointments.
Police and district officials had put extensive security arrangements in place across the area for the Chief Minister’s visit. Entry to the venue was strictly regulated, and people who were not part of the approved arrangements were prevented from approaching the programme site, officials said.
