Striking docs want Didi to visit hospital, refuse talks at secretariat

The protesting junior doctors have refused to attend a meeting convened by chief minister Mamata Banerjee at the state secretariat on Saturday evening and asserted that she must visit them at the NRS Medical College and Hospital, the epicenter of the protests, and meet the agitators.

Meanwhile, local media claimed that the chief minister will visit the injured intern doctor, Paribaha Mukhopadhyay, on Saturday.

Fresh round of protests erupted on the NRS hospital campus on Saturday as IMA national president Santanu Sen, who is also a TMC Rajya Sabha MP, told the media after holding talks with the protesting doctors that he spotted several ‘outsiders’ among those present in the meeting.

The doctors’ strike following the assault of a junior doctor in Kolkata intensified with the All India Institutes of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) doctors on Saturday (June 15) issuing a 48-hour ultimatum to the chief minister to resolve the issue.

The chief minister had softened her tone and invited the protesting doctors for talks to resolve soon after she branded them as ‘outsiders’ and threatened them to vacate the hostels unless they were willing to resume work. The doctors had refused to hold any talks with her.

The protesting doctors had put forward a set of six conditions including an unconditional apology from the chief minister to call off their stir. The state also witnessed resignations of doctors en masse following the incident, with over 500 doctors said to have put down their papers in protest.

Meanwhile, the Calcutta High Court refused to pass interim order on the strike and gave the chief minister a week’s time to hold talks with the protesters and resolve the issue.

On June 10, an intern doctor at the state-run NRS Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata, Paribaha Mukhopadhyay, suffered a skull injury after he was brutally attacked by the goons and family members of an elderly patient who died at the hospital due to alleged negligence.

This triggered a doctors’ strike across government hospitals in the state with medical services being hit except in the emergency wards. Several doctors’ associations, including the AIIMS and the IMA, have condemned the attack and called for security of medical practitioners.

The protests spread to several parts of the country with doctors resorting to one-day strikes and wearing bandages on their head in solidarity with their brethren in West Bengal.