Kolkata: Over 550 doctors of various state-run hospitals across West Bengal resigned from on Friday amid the ongoing agitation by the medical fraternity against the violence at NRS Medical College and Hospital here, leading to a collapse of health services and inconvenience to patients.
The mass resignations came a day after chief minister Mamata Banerjee warning of strict action against protesting doctors if they do not resume work.
State junior doctors have been agitating since Tuesday demanding security for themselves in government hospitals, after two of their colleagues were attacked and seriously injured allegedly by relatives of a patient who died at the NRS Medical College and Hospital.
Till the reports last came in more than 550 doctors submitted their resignations to the Trinamul Congress government as their demand for security is yet to be met since Ms Banerjee remained unfazed despite the situation spinning out of her control.
The doctors, including heads of departments of medical colleges and other hospitals in Kolkata, Burdwan, Darjeeling and North 24 Parganas districts, sent their resignation letters to the state director of medical education, said a senior health department official.
“We express fullest solidarity to the current movement of NRS Medical College and Hospital and other government hospitals agitating to protest the brutal attack on them while on duty,” Dr P. Kundu, director of the Calcutta School of Tropical Medicine, said in the resignation letter.
A combative Trinamul supremo blamed the BJP for the trouble and told a rally at Kanchrapara in North 24 Parganas, “Outsiders are instigating the doctors. I had rightly said that they were involved in yesterday’s protest. I had seen some outsiders raising slogans (at SSKM hospital)”
“Please check where the boy, who was giving a statement in NRSMCH, works. He is Deepak Giri working at Calcutta Heart Research Centre in Salt Lake for 10 years. How can he become a junior doctor? I had spoken about outsiders’ presence although all of them were not,” she said.
“I just named him, where he works and how long he has been working with logic. I am not revealing which political party he has been associated with,” she said.
Hardening her stand, the Chief Minister insisted that those living in West Bengal will have to learn to speak in Bengali as she accused the BJP of targeting Bengalis and minorities to replicate the “Gujarat model” to capture power in the state.
Asserting that Ms Banerjee should have been humble in her approach at the SSKM hospital, actor-filmmaker Aparna Sen insisted that the TMC supremo should apologise to the agitating doctors for the alleged threats she issued to them.
CPM general secretary Sitaram Yechury accused Ms Banerjee of politicising the issue of doctors’ agitation and the BJP of communalising it.
“The West Bengal government must invite health workers and resolve this humanitarian crisis on a war footing. The CM is trying to politicise (the issue),” he said.
