‘Enough is enough’: IMA demands action against Ramdev under the Epidemic Act

The Indian Medical Association has urged the health minister Harsh Vardhan to prosecute yoga guru Ramdev for ‘disobeying’ and ‘causing danger to the life of many’ by discouraging people to take approved allopathy drugs. The association threatens to move the judiciary if no action is taken.

Gaon Connection
| Updated: May 22nd, 2021

Union health minister Harsh Vardhan with Ramdev at the launch of Patanjali's Coronil on February 19. Photo: Social media.

In response to the ‘vitriolic’ accusation on modern medicine by Ramdev, a Yoga guru and entrepreneur, the Indian Medical Association (IMA) has demanded the Union health minister, Harsh Vardhan, to take action against the yoga guru under the Epidemic Act, 1897.

“IMA brings to the notice of our Hon. Health minister, a video circulating in social media portraying, the celebrated Yoga guruji addressing “ALLOPATHY EK AISI STUPID AUR DIWALIYA SCIENCE HAI” [Allopathy is such a stupid and bankrupt science],” reads the press statement issued today (May 22) by the national-level doctors’ association.

The statement goes on to read: “He [Ramdev] had further claimed that Remdesivir, Faviflu, and all other approved drugs by DCGI have failed and stated “LAKHO LOGO KI MAUT ALLOPATHY KI DAWAI KHANE SE HUI HAI” [Millions of people have died due to the consumption of allopathy medicines].” 

The IMA also informed that more than 1,200 modern medicine allopathic doctors have sacrificed their life so far, as they are in the front line of the COVID war.

In the wake of such objectionable comments by the yoga guru, the association has demanded the health minister, who himself is a practicing modern medicine allopathic postgraduate and head of the health ministry, to “either accept the challenge and accusation of this gentleman and dissolve the modern medical facility or boldy face and prosecute the person for his words of arson on the sovereignty of the country and book him under the epidemic act to save millions of people from such unscientific utterances.”

The IMA reminded that earlier, Ramdev had uttered modern medical doctors as ‘murderers’ in the presence of the Union health minister himself.

“Enough is enough,” reads the doctors’ association statement signed by JA  Jayalal, national president, and Jayesh M Lele, honorary secretary general of IMA.

If the health minister will not take the Suo moto action against Ramdev, the association threatened to knock the doors of the judiciary to get justice and resort to democcraric means of struggle to propagate the truth to the citizens.

Meanwhile, in another press statement on May 8, the IMA had lashed out at the Union health ministry over COVID19 death data, vaccine shortage and oxygen supply issues in the country.

The association complained that the health ministry had not taken appropriate action to deal with the second COVID-19 wave and that it should ‘wake up’ and respond to mitigate the growing challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Also Read: IMA lashes out at the health ministry over COVID death data, vaccine shortage and oxygen supply issues

Early this year, at an event attended by the Union health minister, Ramdev claimed that Patanjali’s Coronil was the “first evidence-based medicine” for the coronavirus. The IMD had criticised the central government for promoting ‘an unscientific medicine’ like Coronil. The association had come down heavily on the Union health minister for endorsing and making an appearance at the launch of the Coronil by Ramdev.

A couple of days back, on May 9, IMA’s national vice-president Navjot Dahiya lodged a complaint against yoga guru Ramdev and accused him of being ‘insensitive and inhumane’. In yet another video, Ramdev was allegedly seen mocking COVID patients for not breathing properly and the high death toll.