Mamata says ready to resign as junior doctors intensify protest

In a dramatic turn of events, the proposed talks to resolve the RG Kar hospital impasse between agitating junior doctors and the Bengal government never took off on Thursday after protestors refused to enter the meeting venue following the state's rejection of their demand to live telecast the meeting.
Disappointed at the talks not fructifying, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said she was ready to relinquish her chair for the sake of the people but wanted return of normalcy in state-run health care sector which remains crippled on account of the 'cease work' of the junior doctors persisting for over a month.

I do not care for my chair and am ready to resign for the sake of the people, she said, regretting her failure to get the protestors to the discussion table.

Expressing similar disappointment at the talks falling through and transferring responsibilities for it on the shoulders of the state administration, the agitating doctors said they would continue their agitation but remain open for talks.

Banerjee, who waited for the medics to join the meeting for two hours and 10 minutes, later told reporters that the meeting couldn't be live-streamed as demanded since the issue remains sub-judice before various courts including the Supreme Court.

What the Supreme Court can, we can't. There are concrete directions from courts against making discussions on sub-judice matters public. We had placed three cameras to record meeting proceedings, which we could have shared with doctors with the apex court's permission, Banerjee said after leaving Nabanna Sabhaghar, the meeting venue at the secretariat. The doctors, on their part, maintained that they had no ulterior motive for making that demand other than ensuring transparency.

We are disappointed at the CM talking about her chair since we never came here demanding her resignation. We still have faith in the administration and believe that our problems can be solved through discussions. We had set a concrete agenda for talks including justice for our colleague at RG Kar and security for doctors across the state.

"We would still want her presence at any place and time of her choice for the talks and continue our stir till that happens, Arnab Mukhopadhyay, a junior doctor, said.

Banerjee, though, said she sensed external political forces influencing a section of the agitating doctors to jeopardise the proposed meeting.

We have been waiting for over two hours, hoping that good sense would prevail on the junior doctors who are like brothers and sisters to me. I tried to hold talks with the doctors thrice in the past three days to end this stalemate.

"I did my best, but I apologise to the people for failing to bring them to the negotiating table. There are instructions from outside, asking some of the junior doctors not to sit for negotiations, she said at Nabanna, after the discussion efforts failed.

The protestors who reached the secretariat at around 5.25 pm, some 25 minutes past the scheduled time of commencement of the meeting, stayed put at the venue threshold for over two hours even as a high-strung battle of nerves ensued between the two sides with both staying firm on their respective stands.

Senior police officials at the venue, including DGP Rajeev Kumar, ADG (South Bengal) Supratim Sarkar and Chief Secretary Manoj Pant, were engaged in back-to-back discussions with the doctors but failed to convince them.

All this while, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee was reportedly waiting at the venue to take part in the meeting.

We had conveyed in our letter that live streaming would not be possible but had given our assurances that we would have the whole session recorded for documentation and posterity. The chief minister waited for them for the last hour and half. There should be a limit to such demands, Pant said.

The top bureaucrat maintained that since the intention of fixing anomalies in the health sector is common to both sides, there shouldn't be any conflict between them.

The demand to hold live streaming for the whole formal meeting seems unreasonable. The norm is to have the outcome of such meetings live-streamed. We had allowed 30-32 members instead of 15 we previously wanted. We have the best intention to hold this meeting, DGP Kumar said.

Sticking to their original demand, more than 30 medics, representing the 26 medical colleges of the state that are taking part in the stir, went to Nabanna.

The delegation refused to enter Nabanna Sabhaghar after completing entry formalities for all members who were granted access by the government stating they would need the state's assurance of live streaming first.

Earlier, before heading from their sit-in spot outside Swasthya Bhavan, the health department headquarters, following the third and latest invite from the chief secretary, the protesters had stated they would not settle for anything less than a live stream of the talks, which had repeatedly been rejected by the government.

The doctors insisted on having a live stream of the proceedings of the proposed meeting on the ground that they have nothing to hide.

If the CM can hold her administrative meetings in districts on live TV and if Supreme Court proceedings can be telecast live, we see no reason why the same can't happen here, Aniket Mahato, a protesting junior doctor had said.