Ignoring the Supreme Court’s order asking them to resume duty by 5 pm Tuesday, junior doctors in West Bengal, protesting over the rape and murder of their colleague at state-run RG Kar Medical College and Hospital, rejected Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s invitation for talks to resolve the month-long impasse.
Junior doctors, who have been on strike since the August 9 incident and are demanding the removal of Kolkata Police Commissioner Vineet Goyal and several top state health department officials, expressed dissatisfaction with the government putting a restriction on the number of representatives allowed to attend the meeting with the chief minister.
An email sent by Health Secretary Narayan Swaroop Nigam to West Bengal Junior Doctor’s Front, which is spearheading the protest, on Tuesday evening read: “Your small delegation (maximum 10 persons) may visit Nabanna (the state secretariat) now to meet government representatives.”
Maintaining that they were open to a dialogue with the state government, the junior doctors’ forum termed the government’s letter “insulting”. They also said that restricting the number of representatives to 10 was “humiliating”.
“The language of the communication is not only disrespectful to us doctors, it’s downright insensitive. We find no reason to reply to this mail,” said Dr Debasish Halder, a leader of the protesting doctors, as their sit-in before the state Health Department Headquarters at Swasthya Bhavan in Salt Lake continued till late Tuesday night.
Stating that one of their demands is the removal of the health secretary, the protesters said: “We are open to talks but the communique should reach us through proper channels and in a proper manner. Till then, we are here.”
State Finance Minister and Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare Chandrima Bhattacharya said an invitation was sent to the West Bengal Junior Doctor’s Front around 6:12 pm on Tuesday, after which Chief Minister Banerjee waited for them till 7.30 pm at Nabanna.
“Chief minister Mamata Banerjee left after she did not receive any response from the protesting junior doctors,” the minister said.
The chief minister holds the portfolio of the Health Department.
According to sources in the state secretariat, the chief minister was accompanied by Chief Secretary Manoj Pant and Health Secretary Nigam. “The state government has always supported this protest but the chief minister has time and again reiterated and appealed to the junior doctors to return to work. Even the Supreme Court asked them to resume duty by Tuesday 5 pm. Common people shouldn’t be deprived of treatments and hence we continue to appeal to junior doctors to join work,” the MoS (Health) said.
The protesting doctors, meanwhile, decided to continue with their sit-in protest in front of Swasthya Bhavan. During the day, they had marched to ‘Swasthya Bhavan’ carrying brooms and a model human brain in a symbolic bid to “clean up” the state health sector and make the top brass “think” about the plight of the doctors.
They had earlier set the 5 pm deadline for the state government to accept their charter of five demands, which included the resignation of the Kolkata Police Commissioner, the state Health Secretary, Director of Health Education (DHE), and Director of Health Services (DHS). “Despite our peaceful march and clear demand for justice, the state government has not addressed our concerns,” said one of the protesting doctors.
The state government claimed in the Supreme Court that the strike has resulted in the deaths of 23 patients and has severely impacted the healthcare delivery mechanism.
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