Doctors and medical students blocked roads and skipped work across large parts of India as protests spread against a controversial government move to reserve more college seats for lower castes.

Medical care at state-run hospitals in the western state of Gujarat and West Bengal in the east was disrupted, leaving thousands of patients stranded without treatment.

In the national capital New Delhi, students, striking interns and doctors set up makeshift treatment centres in the open. The move was aimed at making sure some patients were treated while underlining the protest, they said. Despite the protests, the government has said it would go ahead with its move to more than double the proportion of seats reserved for lower castes and tribes. If the decision becomes law, it will see nearly half the places in top educational institutes reserved for the country’s traditionally underprivileged groups.

This has sparked fury among upper caste students, especially medical students, who have to compete fiercely on merit for limited seats in medical, engineering and management schools. “If the government does not care for us, why should we work for them ?” said Keyur Panchal, a pediatrician on strike from work at a government-run hospital in Ahmedebad, Gujarat’s main city.

In other cities of Gujarat, students washed cars at traffic intersections yesterday to highlight their protest as bemused motorists looked on. On Tuesday in the central city of Bhopal, some shaved their heads. Though India has officially banned caste discrimination, the ancient Hindu social system is still extremely powerful and raises intense passions.

In 1990, many upper caste students burnt themselves to death to protest a move to reserve more government jobs for lower castes. Lower caste students entering much-sought-after higher education schools through quotas need lower admission marks. “We’ve had enough reservations,” said medical student Sujata Mukherjee in Kolkata in West Bengal where thousands are protesting. “Now is the time to focus only on merit, nothing else.”

Junior doctors and interns are on strike in the eastern state, causing widespread disruption to medical services. In Siliguri town, over 500 km (300 miles) north of Kolkata, hundreds of students and doctors blocked a national highway. They burnt the effigies of the Human Resources Development Minister Arjun Singh, seen as the architect of the quota move.

Lower caste groups who support Singh said students from their communities – who face social discrimination and a lack of educational opportunities – need state help to enter elite educational institutions. As the row escalated, patients were caught in the middle.

“There are no doctors to attend to my son,” Falgun Dave, a retired government official, said in Ahmedabad, trying to get treatment for his son who was injured in a motorcycle crash.