West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee waits at the state secretariat Nabanna ahead of talks with protesting junior doctors regarding the recent alleged rape and murder of a medic at the RG Kar Medical College and Hospital, in Kolkata.
Credit: PTI Photo
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday clarfied that since the RG Kar rape-murder case was sub-judice, the meeting between her and the agitating junior doctors could not be live streamed.
This came after the agitating junior doctors refused to hold talks with the Bengal government to resolve the RG Kar impasse unless their demand for live streaming of the meeting was met.
The talks were to be held at 5pm in the presence of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee as demanded by the protesters. The CM waited for more than an hour to meet the agitating junior doctors. However, it did not take place as scheduled.
The protestors reached the secretariat around 5:25 pm, some 25 minutes past the scheduled time of commencement of the meeting, and stayed put at the venue gate for over an hour and were seen engaged in meetings 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 even state chief secretary Manoj Pant, who were seen engaged in back-to-back discussions with the doctors’ delegation and other officials, failed to convince the unrelenting doctors who refused to budge.
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 will not be possible but had given our assurances that we would have the whole session recorded for documentation and posterity. The chief minister is waiting for them for the last hour and half. There should be a limit to such demands. We have tried to convince the doctors but they have still not accepted. We request them to consider attending this meeting,” said chief secretary Pant.
The top bureaucrat maintained that since the intention of fixing the anomalies in the health sector is common to both sides, there shouldn’t be any conflict between the doctors and state administration.