RG Kar protest: Mamata Banerjee meets protesting doctors. Inside details

Chief minister Mamata Banerjee has promised to look into the doctors demands after a conversation on ‘threat culture’ in hospitals

A meeting between the West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee and protesting junior doctors took place on Monday evening.

Junior Doctors address a press conference during their fast-unto-death hunger strike before leaving for the Nabanna to hold talks with CM Mamata Banerjee(Saikat Paul)

During the meeting, various demands of the doctors were addressed, including the prevailing “threat culture” at state-run hospitals. This was the first meeting between the two parties to be streamed live from the state secretariat Nabanna.

According to a PTI report, Mamata Banerjee urged the junior doctors to end their fast, stating that most of their demands had already been met by the state government, except for the removal of the state health secretary N S Nigam.

The chief minister further pointed out, “At RG Kar Medical College and Hospital, several junior doctors and medical students were suspended without following proper procedures and rules. How can these students or resident doctors be suspended just based on complaints?”

Banerjee added, “Who gave the college authorities the right to take such a step without informing the state government? Is this not a threat culture?”

Aniket Mahato, one of the doctors on strike who had to be hospitalised after five days of fasting, countered Mamata Banerjee by saying that those who had been suspended were part of the threat culture and “don’t deserve to be doctors”.

He also said that the state government could assess their performance and see that they were “goons under the guise of students” who did not deserve to pass examinations either if one looked at their answer sheets, PTI reported.

The meeting was held to resolve the impasse on demands stemming from the rape and murder of a trainee doctor at RG Kar Medical Hospital in August.

Since then there have been two statewide cease-work protests by junior doctors, as well as the current indefinite hunger strike by junior doctors that has continued for 17 days, calling for justice for the victim of the RG Kar rap-murder case and systemic changes in the state's healthcare infrastructure.

The doctors had threatened the West Bengal government that if their demand to sack the state health secretary N S Nigam was not met, a nationwide strike by doctors would be organised on October 22.

So far, six doctors in the fast-unto-death have been hospitalised, while eight others remain on an indefinite fast, demanding that the state government take constructive action.

Chief minister Mamata Banerjee promised to look into their demands once again after the meeting.