India, Sept. 2 -- Resident doctors at the government-run JJ Hospital and Grant Government Medical College are demanding urgent expansion of hostel facilities. Due to a severe accommodation crunch, residents are often crammed together into suffocating on-call rooms, several are forced to bathe in ward washrooms, lack of hygiene has compromised their health, and it is only a matter of time before their performance begins to suffer, they warn.

Currently, JJ Hospital has over 800 junior residents across three batches of MD-MS programmes, more than 150 super-speciality residents, and about 100 bonded residents.

Across the hostels at JJ, GT and St George hospitals, along with the nursing hostel and a few other facilities, there are only about...