Kolkata: Protesting junior doctors in West Bengal defied a Supreme Court order, asking them to resume work by 5 pm on Tuesday, and said they would continue with their protest till their demands were fulfilled and the rape and murder victim of the RG Kar Hospital was given justice.
As the medicos continued to protest for the 32nd day on Tuesday, demanding the removal of the Kolkata police commissioner and several top state health department officials, the state government said Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has written to the protesters, inviting them for a meeting at the secretariat to resolve the impasse over the incident.
However, the protesting doctors said the mail for the meeting was from the state health secretary, whose resignation they were seeking, and termed it as “insulting”. They also said that restricting the number of representatives to attend the meeting to 10 was “humiliating”.
During the day, the protesting doctors marched to ‘Swasthya Bhavan’ – the headquarters of the health department in Salt Lake – and staged a sit-in outside the office building to press for their demand. The protesters carried brooms and a model human brain while marching towards 'Swasthya Bhavan' in a symbolic bid to "clean up" the state health sector and make the top brass "think" about the plight of the doctors.
The top court on Monday directed the protesting resident doctors to resume work by 5 pm on Tuesday, observing that if “there is continued abstention from work, there may be a likelihood of adverse action”.
Meanwhile, the RG Kar hospital authorities issued notices to 51 doctors, including to senior residents and professors, accusing them of fostering intimidation and disrupting the institution’s democratic atmosphere, and summoned them to an inquiry committee on September 11.
The junior doctors began their strike on August 9, hours after the body of the female trainee was found in the seminar room of the hospital. Since then, the protest has escalated, leading to disruptions in healthcare services at state-run hospitals across West Bengal. 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.
