There are very few chairs and benches for the waiting patients. Many of them suffer from heart ailments or neurological disorders, and yet they are forced to keep standing for hours waiting for their doctor to call them as there is no place to sit.

``It is like playing a macabre game of musical chairs. If I go out for a minute, someone else takes my chair. Then one has to keep standing near the chair and the moment he gets up, one has to grab it,'' says a patient waiting in the Neurology OPD waiting room. There is no ventilation and the heat takes its toll.

Doctors claim that the patients who make it to the waiting room are lucky. ``Those patients who attend the afternoon session at OPD in AIIMS have to stand in a queue from 11 a.m. onwards. As there is no space inside the building, they stand outside under the hot sun. When temperatures soar, the patients go through hell. At least in the waiting room, they have a roof over their heads,'' said a doctor, who pleads anonymity.

When this reporter visited the OPD at 10 a.m., there was a long queue of patients standing outside the building for the afternoon session. Around noon, however, the queue disappears. Instead, there is a line of stones that serve as paperwieghts for medical records. At some distance, the patients stand under the shade of trees, with an eye on their possessions -- stones kept on medical casesheets.

Many of these patients come from towns adjoining Delhi. A patient's relative says: ``The patient goes through a lot of strain travelling by bus. When we finally arrive here, we have to stand for hours in long queues to get our file out. Then, we have to wait for a few more hours in this suffocating waiting room where there is no place to sit before getting an opportunity to see the doctor.''

Another patient, who had also been waiting for long time, complained: ``There are some patients who come late but they get to see the doctor before the others just because they have the right contacts. But if they know the right people why do they have to come to a government hospital? Why can't they go to nursing homes or the posh Apollo Hospital?''

Patients also complain that the staff is very un-cooperative and keep chatting amongst themselves even as they keep waiting. Problems of space apart, the toilets for the OPD patients stink. There is no regular supply of water and it had not been cleaned for days.