Mayor Nandu Satam told the Joint Coordination Committee of Chemists that the levy would not be withdrawn, adding that the duty should have in fact been imposed 10 years ago. He asked them why the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) should exempt medicines from octroi when the levy is charged on other products.

Over-the-counter sale of drugs was completely stopped with the 6,800 drugstores in Mumbai, affiliated to various chemists' and distributors' associations, remaining shut. The agitation has also received ``unconditional support'' from their counterparts in Thane and Navi Mumbai, who will down shutters on September 4 if the June 22 decision to levy octroi on medicines is not revoked. Life-saving drugs, though, were made available by the five controlrooms opened by the coordination committee.

``It has been an extremely hectic day. Our staff manning the control rooms attended to over 4,000 calls from people requiring medicines. However, they were supplied only to persons who could produce a medical prescription. We also did not entertain people who wanted over-the-counter household drugs,'' Kishore Shah, president of the Retail and Dispensing Chemists' Association, told Express Newsline.

``There were two cases in South Mumbai which urgently required anti-cancer drugs costing about Rs 25,000 per ampoule. Our control room at Prarthna Samaj procured the drugs and delivered them at the callers' doorsteps,'' Shah says.

The strike will not immediately affect civic and state-run hospitals in Mumbai as they have been supplied with additional stocks. Dr L B Khotkar, superintendent of J J Hospital, says government hospitals ``do no merely depend on supply from chemists'' and will not run out of stocks for 10 days at least.

However, they refused to sellmedicines to outdoor patients. ``We have to be prepared for contingencies in the wake of a calamity or a disaster when we might have to use large stocks of medicines without notice. Selling medicines to outdoor patients under these circumstances is virtually impossible,'' says a doctor from KEM Hospital at Parel.

Bombay Hospital in South Mumbai had some difficulty controlling the crowd which clamoured for supplies. The authorities divided the people into two queues - ones requiring medicines for the hospital's indoor patients and the other comprising outsiders.

However, tempers ran high as indoor patients were given preferential treatment. ``All seven chemists around the hospital are not open and I have been waiting for two hours to get Amoxicillin capsules for my daughter,'' said Upendra Tripathi, a resident of Colaba. ``Is my daughter's life less important than those who are admitted to this hospital,'' he asked.

The hospital though says it is not duty-bound to cater to the general public. ``Witharound seven large chemists around the hospital, we generally never get requests for medicines from outside. Since they are shut today, we obliged those who produced prescriptions,'' the hospital's pharmacy manager Lalit P Kaushal, told Express Newsline.