Lucknow, April 24 -- Expressing concern over government doctors leaving their jobs for private hospitals due to better salary, the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad high court has asked the Centre and the state governments as to how far it is reasonable and justified to club doctors and other specialists with other cadres of the bureaucracy for determining their pay structure. A division bench of Justice Rajan Roy and Justice Manjive Shukla raised the issue on Wednesday during a hearing of the public interest litigation (PIL) petition filed by the NGO 'We the People' in 2016 through its general secretary Prince Lenin. The PIL sought details of ventilators required in all government hospitals and medical universities in Lucknow. The petitioner also raised other treatment-related issues. The court said: "The question of adequacy of salary being paid to the government doctors vis-a-vis what is being paid to similarly placed doctors in private hospitals will also fall for consideration as, after all, because of the low salary in the Government Hospitals many of them migrate to private hospitals thereby depriving the ordinary citizens of their valuable expertise and services." "It is a question to be pondered by the Union of India and the state government as to how far it is reasonable and justified to club the doctors and other specialists with other cadres of the bureaucracy for determining their pay structure," the court said. "The services rendered by the doctors is much more important than the services being rendered by other functionaries in the bureaucracy for obvious reasons as it is related to the very sustenance of a citizen and Right to Life," the court observed. The court listed the case on May 25 for the next hearing. htc...