Anbumani Ramadoss vs P Venugopal

	A year of battle between the two

The medical fraternity as well as layman would remember the year 2007 for the way the Director of the premier medical institute All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) P Venugopal who spent around 45 years of his life at the institute was sacked by the Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss. The two and half year tussle between the two (Venugopal and Ramadoss) led to the AIIMS amendment bill. Seen by many as personal vendetta of the minister, Government passed a bill fixing the retirement age of the AIIMS Director at 65 years or a term of five years, leading to the removal of the noted surgeon. Nevertheless, Venugopal has approached the apex court. The Supreme Court in turn has asked Centre “Why at this stage the necessity of this amendment?” and also what prompted it (Centre) to rush through with the controversial law. Perhaps no other Union Health Minister in the history of the ministry was in media glare. This minister caused more strikes, more protests and more opposition than the reforms he intended to bring about. Almost every step that he took caused trouble and suffering more so to the commoners who lined up at AIIMS for the treatment of their near and dear ones.

Anti-Tobacco campaign:

He spent the whole year fighting- with the film stars for smoking on screen, with the tobacco lobby for not calling their products deadly. The minister came out with lots of proposal ranging from getting pictorial warnings to ban in smoking in work place, and above all "tobacco regulatory authority". The minister not only failed to get it (pictorial warnings) cleared by a Group of Ministers examining but also indulged himself in another controversy when he virtually charged that four chief ministers and as many as 150 MPs were lobbying with him to support the "powerful tobacco industry". Experts feel that his comments on tobacco lobbying can further derail his objective to ban tobacco in the country.