The Bombay High Court on Thursday ordered resident doctors in Maharashtra to immediately withdraw their statewide strike, expressing serious concern over the impact of the agitation on patient care and warning that protesting doctors could face salary cuts if they failed to resume work.

The strike, called by the Maharashtra Association of Resident Doctors (MARD), was launched in protest against the registration of homoeopathy practitioners under the Maharashtra Medical Council, a move doctors claim could allow homoeopaths to prescribe allopathic medicines.