Hyderabad: Andhra Pradesh government held the discussion with striking junior doctors’ representative to break the deadlock.

At the instance of Chief Minister Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, who’s in New Delhi, Home Minister K. Jana Reddy held three-hour long talks with a 17 member team of junior doctors in the Secretariat to persuade them to end the strike.

But junior doctors took a break from discussions to consult State-level leaders of erstwhile AP Junior Doctors Association on the issue of continuing the strike.

However, the Government threatened to invoke the Essential Services Maintenance Act, but later deferred its implementation and inviting the medicos for talks.

The negotiations were deadlocked over the junior doctors’ insistence that the Government put its offer in writing, a demand that the Home Minister refused.

Mr. Reddy said that the Government decided to post a posse of policemen comprising one Assistant Sub-Inspector and 20 constables each in Gandhi, Osmania, Niloufer, Nayapul, and Sultan Bazar Hospitals besides the Nizam’s Institute of Medical Sciences.