Hyderabad: The state’s objective of making the medical fraternity serve in rural areas received some encouragement on Thursday from the A P High Court which suspended an order of the A P Administrative Tribunal that stalled this process last week.

    The division Bench comprising Justice Ghulam Mohammad and Justice P Swaroop Reddy, in an interim direction, suspended the tribunal’s order in favour of civil assistant surgeons of Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences (Rims), Kadapa.

    The tribunal, in its order passed on August 18, 2010, had directed the health department not to prepare the select list of doctors for filling up of 2423 assistant professors, civil assistant surgeons and medical officers’ vacancies in director of medical education, AP Vaidya Vidhana Parishad and director of public health and family welfare departments.

    The state government had decided to fill up the posts by awarding weightage marks to doctors rendering services in rural and tribal areas in the state on contract basis. It decided not to award any such weightage marks for those working in urban areas on contract basis and issued a GO to this effect on May 18, 2010.

    Aggrieved by this decision, 11 doctors of RIMS, Kadapa, had approached the tribunal which ruled in their favour. However, the government approached the high court seeking suspension of the tribunal order. Additional advocate general A Satya Prasad, arguing the case before the Bench, contended that the tribunal had failed in considering the objective of the state government in providing weightage marks to doctors serving in rural and tribal areas.

    He said that all the vacancies notified for recruitment were falling only in rural and tribal areas and none in urban areas. The bench suspended the operation of the tribunal order.