Deploy AYUSH, Homeopathy doctors and students for COVID relief: ABVP to PM Modi

The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, the RSS' students' wing, wants the government to deploy Ayurveda and homeopathy practitioners and students for providing COVID-19 related medical care. They also want the government to convert residential colleges and universities into COVID isolation wards and start vaccination centres in colleges. These are among a few of their demands that they had made to Prime Minister Narendra Modi through a letter that they submitted to him.

Praising the government for its 'reassuring' measures to attain 'victory over COVID-19', they say that "the world’s largest vaccination drive against COVID-19, presently underway in India, is a matter of national pride." The ABVP also says that final year medical students too should be deployed for COVID relief, following Gujarat and Haryana. "3A mechanism should be developed to facilitate the voluntary inclusion of students in various medical programmes with at least one year of lab experience, for deployment in vaccination drives as well as non-medical care and relief work," the letter says.

Echoing a few popular demands among the student community, the ABVP asks Modi to postpone all entrance examinations until June to give the last year's UPSC aspirants a second chance and to relax the age criteria for competitive exams. They also seek to continue online classes, organise localised community classes and have a uniform fee structure with reduced fees in schools. They also say that a high-level committee should be constituted to look into the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the quality of primary and higher education as well as address other emerging challenges in the field of education.