The West Bengal government announced Saturday that the mass resignation of senior doctors from various state-run hospitals are not valid as the letters have to be submitted individually as per the service rules.

West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee’s Chief Advisor Alapan Bandyopadhyay said, “There has been confusion recently regarding the so-called resignation of senior doctors working in government medical colleges and hospitals. We have been receiving certain letters which do refer to mass resignations… Certain pages without any mention of the subject have been annexed to such letters. Those annexed papers contain some signatures without the designations mentioned. These mass resignations, as they are being described, actually have no legal value… This kind of generic letter has no legal standing…”

“Unless an employee sends in his/her resignation personally to the employer as per service rules, it is not a resignation letter,” Bandyopadhyay said at the state secretariat Nabanna.

Earlier this week, a group of senior doctors at R G Kar Medical College sent a collectively signed “mass resignation” letter in solidarity with their protesting junior colleagues. Subsequently, similar letters were sent by doctors from other state-run hospitals.

Another junior doctor, who was observing a fast-unto-death, was rushed to a hospital on Saturday evening after his health condition deteriorated, an official said. Anustup Mukherjee’s condition was stated to be “serious” by his colleagues at the agitation site, a medic said.

Earlier on Saturday, Alok Varma, a junior doctor at North Bengal Medical College, was admitted to a healthcare facility after his condition deteriorated, an official said. Aniket Mahato, one of the faces of the protest, was taken ill and admitted to R G Kar Hospital three days ago.

Meanwhile, doctors of private hospitals called for a 48-hour “partial cease work” from October 14 in medical establishments across West Bengal, in solidarity with the agitating junior medics observing a fast-unto-death.