In the first sign of a breakthrough, more than a month after protests began on August 9 over the rape-and-murder of a junior doctor at R G Kar Medical College and Hospital, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday announced the removal of senior police and health officials, including Kolkata Commissioner of Police (CP) Vineet Kumar Goyal.
Banerjee made the announcement late on Monday night, after holding the first round of talks with a delegation of junior doctors at her residence in Kalighat.
The removal of these senior officials was among the demands listed by the protesters. Besides Goyal, Banerjee announced the removal of Deputy Commissioner of Police (North) Abhishek Gupta, Director of Medical Education (DME) Debashish Halder and Director of Health Services (DHS) Koustav Nayek.
Emerging from the meeting, which continued till close to midnight, the junior doctors said the talks were “positive” but they needed to hold discussions with their colleagues before taking a final call on resuming work.
Addressing the media later, Banerjee said: “We have requested the junior doctors to return to work. They said they will discuss and decide. I spoke with the CP and took him into confidence, he said he wanted to leave. Regarding the DME and DHS, I have asked the Chief Secretary to do the needful… I ask the people of Bengal not to misunderstand us. We accepted four of the demands of the junior doctors.”
She said the new CP would be announced on Tuesday.
While the meeting, which began at around 6.50 pm, is learnt to have lasted for over two hours, the two sides took another over two hours to finalise the minutes of the meeting.
Last week, the junior doctors had refused to meet Banerjee unless the government agreed to their demand for live-streaming the proceedings. But on Monday, in an email sent to Chief Secretary Manoj Pant, they agreed to settle for the “minutes with full transcript of the meeting… (being) recorded and formulated by both the parties… and duly signed by all attendees and handed over at the end of the meeting”.
The protesters had listed a five-point demand: expedite the investigation into the rape-murder and punish the culprits without delay; suspend former R G Kar principal Dr Sandip Ghosh and all others “directly or indirectly involved with tampering of evidence”; removal of Kolkata CP Goyal; adequate security within hospital premises; and “end threat culture prevalent in all healthcare facilities”.
According to the minutes of the meeting released by the junior doctors, the state government assured all necessary assistance to the CBI, which is probing the case, for expediting the probe into the rape-murder. Besides the transfers of senior police and health officials, the state government proposed a task force, headed by the chief secretary and including the home secretary, DGP and Kolkata CP as well as representatives of the junior doctors, to look into the safety and security in hospital and college premises.
“Rs 100 crore has been sanctioned for hospital infrastructure like CCTV, washroom etc, which will be formalised in close consultation with the medical fraternity… An effective and responsive grievance redressal mechanism will be put into place in the medical infrastructure across hospitals and colleges,” they said, adding, “It was jointly resolved to work in close coordination to discuss and resolve all issues faced by the medical fraternity at the level of chief secretary”.
“It was also proposed that the existing threat culture prevalent in the medical colleges can be removed after further deliberations through specific formulations (democratically elected students unions…). Regarding cease work and ongoing sit-in demonstration at Swasthya Bhawan, (the junior doctors’) representatives submitted that a decision will be arrived at only after further discussion with all the junior doctors,” they said.
On Thursday, after the protesters refused to join talks at Nabanna (state secretariat), Banerjee had said that she was “ready to resign for the sake of the people”. Two days later, she made a surprise visit to the protest site on Saturday and invited the junior doctors for talks.
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