The Delhi High Court Friday directed North Delhi Municipal Corporation (North-DMC) to pay the salary for March to the resident doctors in its six hospitals, including Kasturba Gandhi and Hindu Rao by June 19.

A bench of Chief Justice D N Patel and Justice Prateek Jalan also asked the Delhi government to release funds to North DMC so that it can pay the April salary of the resident doctors of its hospitals by June 24.

The bench also issued notice to the Centre, Delhi government, North DMC and various doctors’ association seeking their stand on the PIL initiated by the high court on its own. The detailed order is awaited in the matter which is listed for further hearing on July 8.

Delhi government and Centre said the amount to be paid, each month, to the resident doctors of the six North DMC hospitals comes to around Rs 8 crore.

The high court on Thursday initiated the PIL based on news reports that doctors of Kasturba Gandhi Hospital have threatened to resign as they have not been paid salaries since March this year.

The news reports also stated that recently doctors of North MCD-run Hindu Rao hospital had written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi over non-payment of their salaries for last three months. The court took suo motu notice of the news reports and initiated the PIL.

The COVID-19 infections in the national capital continue to soar with 34,687 cases reported till Friday. The death toll in the state has climbed to 1,085.

Projecting an exponential growth in the city’s numbers, Arvind Kejriwal had said, “In SDMA’s meeting yesterday, the numbers that were presented showed that by June 15 will be having 44,000 coronavirus cases, June 30 – 1 lakh, July 15 – 2.15 lakh cases. For everyone’s safety, promoting social distancing and usage of masks has to be a ‘jan andolan’ (people’s movement), just like the odd-even scheme.”

He further said that Delhi needs about 1.5 lakh beds by July and added that he will personally oversee stadiums being turned into quarantine centres.

“In normal times, 50 per cent patients come from outside Delhi for treatments. So going by that calculation, we need about 1.5 lakh beds by July. I will personally oversee stadiums being turned into quarantine centres. In last eight days, Delhi hospitals admitted 1,900 people. Around 4,200 beds are vacant in hospitals,” Kejriwal said.